


lilding on Rock 



lENRY Kingman ■ 






I r. 



•x * 









•■ii 1 1 i 







Copyright ]\'" 



COEHRICHr SERlsa^ 



BUILDING ON ROCK 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 

The Christian According to Paul: John T. Paris 

Psalms of the Social Life: Cleland B. McAfee 

The Many-Sided David: PhUip E. Howard 

Meeting the Master: Ozora S. Davis 

Under the Highest Leadership: John Douglas Adam 

A Living Book in a Living Age: Lynn Harold Hough 

How God Calls Men: Prederick Harris 

Marks OF a World Christian: Daniel Johnson Pleming 

Building on Rock: Henry Kingman 

Other volumes to be announced later 



EVERYDAY LIFE SERIES 

Building on Rock 

Character-Building under the 
Master Builder 



HENRY KINGMAN 



'* Everyone therefore that heareih these words of mine, and 
doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who built 
his house upon the rock." — Matthew 7:24. 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York : 347 Madison Avenue 
1919 



yJA'S 



o\ 



/A^ 



Copyright, 19 i9. by 

The International Committee op 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



OCT 25 (919 



Ttie Bible Text used in this volume is taken from the American Standard 
Edition of the Revised Bible, copyright, 1901, by Thomas Nelson & Sons, and 
is used by permission. 

©CI.A535470 



40 

t 

CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Introduction vii 

I. The Background of Faith i 

II. Facing toward God 13 

III. Facing toward Man 26 

IV. The Demand for Genuineness 40 

V. Be Ye Merciful 56 

VI. Intensity of Purpose 73 

VII. The Lowliness of S rvice 91 

VIII. Evils that Lay Waste Life 108 

' IX. The Duty of Prayer 129 

X. The Goodly Fellowship 146 



INTRODUCTION 

Thoughtful men and women in our day are concerned as 
men have seldom been before to get at reality in religion. 
There have been long periods of Christian history in which 
this insistent demand for reality before all else has by no 
means been the dominant note in religious thinking. Men 
have been strangely satisfied with what was traditional or 
conventional or respectable, with what was endorsed by the 
Church, or prescribed by the creeds, or apparently advantage-' 
ous to society. But today, largely because of the scientific 
and critical temper of our age, in which sheer honesty and 
love of the truth will allow nothing to pass unchallenged, 
we are quite unable to take over our religion from the past, 
even if we wished to do so. We are no longer satisfied that 
what our fathers rested on so implicitly, in theology any 
more than in other fields of knowledge, must needs be true. 

We are compelled, whether we will or no, to apply the test 
of reality to every phase of the religious life. Is there any- 
thing about it that for us is merely formal or conventional, or 
that now begins to appear outworn or artificial or illusory? 
Is our own personal religion, or the current religion of 
Christian society, "the real thing"? Or does it show signs 
of collapsing under strain, as though it could not meet the 
fierce test of present-day problems? Obviously there is a. 
dismaying breakdown of much that has passed for Chris- 
tianity. What, in fact, is Christianity, and where do we get 
closest to its heart? 

It does not matter whether we enjoy asking questions such 
as these, or whether we like to hear others ask them. We 
cannot help it. It is impossible for us to share in the 
scholarly life of our generation and not feel the force of 
this insistent demand for the essential and abiding elements 
in the Christian faith. 

Our Lord himself would be in sympathy with such a temper. 
It has its dangers and plainly may be pressed to an extreme. 
But it is the very temper that he tried to introduce into the 

vii 



INTRODUCTION 

thinking of his age. He broke himself against the unyielding 
wall of the "stand-pat" attitude of his day toward religious 
things. He labored to make men feel — what was -so clear 
to him — that the popular religion was full of elements of 
unreality; beliefs and practices that were merely traditional 
or ceremonial, that were outgrown or even cramping and 
hurtful to society. He tried to bring men back to such 
sympathy with God's thought that they could discriminate 
4>etween the genuine and the false. He told them how they 
could be in deed and in truth real children of the Father — 
how life could be reared on eternal foundations, instead of 
collapsing into early ruin through sheer blund-ering. But 
they could not see. They were not honest enough to try to 
see. Yet we may be very sure that if he had found in 
them the eager even if critical appetite for truth, willing to 
search and sift with the open-mindedness of our day, he 
would have prized it far more than their hereditary loyalty 
to accredited church teaching. 

On one of the days of his teaching, when he had been 
laying stress on this very danger of illusion in religion, he 
illustrated in much detail the difference between reality and 
unreality in the religious life. He drew many pictures of the 
way in which men deceive themselves and lay waste their 
characters, when they seem to themselves, and even to others, 
to give evidence of conspicuous piety. The essence of his 
contention he summed up in a vivid sentence that will never 
be forgotten while men live. It may be strenuously denied, 
but forgotten it cannot be. "He who does according to my 
words," he said, "is a man who builds his house upon a rock." 
He builds the character that is unshakable. Life's storms 
cannot break it down. It is the real thing, even through the 
ages. ■ It rises out of the truth, and it relates itself to truth 
at every stage of its development. It takes hold on the 
strength of God, because it grows to be a part of his thought 
and purpose. 

It was an audacious thing to say, when Jesus said it. He 
was setting aside the judgment of many wise and good 
men through the centuries, and discarding certain religious 
beliefs and practices that seemed to his hearers sacred from 
long usage. He was setting himself up as the supreme 
authority upon human character. But the statement no 



INTRODUCTION 

longer seems audacious. It has been tested from every con- 
ceivable angle through eighteen centuries. And never was 
there such a consensus of opinion as there is today, after this 
cataclysm of the Great War, that he spoke the truth. The 
nearer a man comes to shaping his life completely upon the 
teaching of Jesus, the nearer he comes not only to being 
morally great but to being the invaluable helper of society. 
He achieves the highest that is possible for men. 

This does not mean — what some instantly think of it as 
meaning — that one should arbitrarily shape his life by the 
letter of three or four of our Lord's detached sayings, of a 
strongly ascetic type — "resist not evil," "sell that thou hast 
and give unto the poor," "call no man master" — but that he 
should seek, with an honesty daily renewed and enlightened, 
to live as Jesus unmistakably and consistently bade men 
live, taking the spirit and example of Jesus as the inspiration 
of his life. A man who does this, whether he be like Living- 
stone or Lincoln or Mazzini or Pasteur, will be a man not 
only acceptable to God but beloved of humanity. His limita- 
tions and his errors may be obvious enough, but his greatness 
will appear in spite of them, and his friendliness to men 
will be as inevitable as his loyalty to God. 

There is nothing in the world of phenomena more real 
than character. There is no more efficient force than the 
force of love that somehow radiates from the personality 
of Jesus. We cannot get closer to reality in religion than in 
this habitual submission to his leadership, which he described 
as "building upon rock." If any man has a better way to 
arrive at life's noblest development, it is for him to demon- 
strate it before the world, and society will turn to it with 
eagerness. But it has never appeared. 

Meanwhile we turn reverently to that unchallenged au- 
thority in the field of character, to learn what he would 
have us do and be. These studies are the followirlg out of 
such an inquiry. What must we do to build our house of 
life upon the rock? What are the words that we, after so 
many years, must still hear and do if we would be saved 
from wasting the irrecoverable years? What commands does 
Jesus lay on men? 

No attempt will be made in these lessons to separate his 
commands into classes — religious, ethical, or social — or to 



INTRODUCTION 

distinguish sharply between duties to man and God and self, 
as though they fell under different departments of human 
experience. They blend into one another. For the most 
part they were inseparable in his thought, and though we 
may profitably segregate one class at times for special study 
or attention, in a study course as general as this such 
division would be uncalled-for. In the choice of topics it 
merely follows certain lines of obvious priority and sequence. 
The Synoptic Gospels are used as sources for the study, 
and the daily readings are for the most part from them, 
supplemented here and there by the Fourth Gospel. Where 
his closest friends left some word that illuminates his thought, 
these passages are occasionally added, not as primary sources, 
but for purposes of illustration and application. 



CHAPTER I 

The Background of Faith 

DAILY READINGS 
First Week, First Day 

Beware of false prophets, who come to you in sheep's 
clothing, but inwardly are ravening wolves. By their 
fruits ye shall know them. Do men gather grapes of 
thorns, or figs of thistles? Even so every good tree 
bringeth forth good fruit; but the corrupt tree bringeth 
forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, 
neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every 
tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and 
cast into the fire. Therefore by their fruits ye shall 
know them. Not every one that saith unto me. Lord, 
Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he 
that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven. 
Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, did we 
not prophesy by thy name, and by thy name cast out 
demons, and by thy name do many mighty works? And 
then will I profess unto them, I never knew you: depart 
from me, ye that work iniquity. — Matt. 7:15-23. 

The demand for reality could hardly be more sharply 
put than in this passage. It insists on character as the 
ultimate essential. It applies the pragmatic test of results 
to professions of every kind, without any sort of reservation. 
Professions are cheap. It is easy for a man to claim the 
faith of an angel or *the devotion of an apostle. He may 
even deceive himself. But let him make good ! That, and 
only that, will show whether his claims are worth listening 
to. If he does not do my Father's will, said Jesus, he does 
not belong to the Kingdom of Heaven. My name, or God's 
name, may continually be on his lips, but he is a fraud. 



[1-2] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Character means the choice of God's will, day :n and day 
out, for the whole length of the winding way of life. And 
Jesus often asserted, and always assumed, that he was him- 
self the revelation of what God's will meant for human life. 
So he confidently bade men follow him. Where they have 
really done so, they have helped to make this world seem 
like God's world. 

First Week, Second Day 

While he was yet speaking to the multitudes, behold, 
his mother and his brethren stood without, seeking to 
speak to him. And one said unto him, Behold, thy 
mother and thy brethren stand without, seeking to speak 
to thee. But he answered and said unto him that told 
him. Who is my mother? and who are my brethren? 
And he stretched forth his hand towards his disciples, 
and said. Behold, my mother and my brethren! For 
whosoever shall do the will of my Father who is in 
heaven, he is my brother, and sister, and mother. — Matt. 
12:46-50. 

Again in this passage Jesus put the same truth in the 
strongest possible way. There was no favoritism in God's 
household — no inner circle that had a short cut to prefer- 
ment. He swept clean out of sight all lesser considerations, 
in order that the actual doing of God's will might appear in 
its unchallenged supremacy as the central requirement of 
religion. No doctrinal scheme may be built up — as schemes 
have sometimes been built up — that in any wise obscures the 
inevitable demand for godly living, if one is to be a disciple 
of Jesus. 

Notice also how completely, and as it were unconsciously, 
Jesus assumes that the doing of God's will is the same as 
the doing of his own words. He uses the two expressions 
interchangeably, because he felt that his own teaching was 
only the transmitted message of his Father. "The word 
which ye hear is not mine, but the Father's who sent me" 
(John 14:24). "The things therefore which I speak, even 
as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak" (John 12:50). 
The friends of Jesus, in those Galilean days, were being 
taught of God through the lips and the daily behavior of 
their Master. 



THE BACKGROUND OF FAITH II-3] 

Lord, help us to count it the greatest thing in the world 
to do thy will, and may we fearlessly seek to knozv what that 
will is. 

First Week, Third Day 

Every one therefore that heareth these words of mine, 
and doeth them, shall be likened unto a wise man, who 
built his house upon the rock: and the rain descended, 
and the floods came, and the winds blew, and beat upon 
that house; and it fell not: for it was founded upon the 
rock. And every one that heareth these words of mine, 
and doeth them not, shall be likened unto a foolish man, 
who built his house upon the sand: and the rain de- 
scended, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and 
smote upon that house; and it fell: and great was the 
fall thereof. — Matt. 7:24-27. 

Here is the enunciation of the general principle on which 
these studies are based. To accept the word and follow the 
teaching of Jesus is to build one's life on rock. To hear his 
commands and to keep them, as he said elsewhere, is to live 
in the love of God, and so find life in its highest terms. He 
had entire confidence that if men would do as he said, they 
would .be saved from all illusion and mistake in spending 
life's capital, and would be spared the moral bankruptcy 
that befalls so many. He presents this plain ethical require- 
ment as the test of righteousness. Nothing is said here 
about belief, to embarrass for any mind the simple moral 
issue. A very simple creed is all he asks for — the creed of 
trusting him as Master. 

And yet see what a tremendous conviction of faith such 
a creed involves — all the faith, indeed, that Jesus ever per- 
sonally asked of men. To trust ourselves to his direction 
with complete abandonment, to put in his hands all our little 
capital of life, to abide by his decision as to our conduct 
through fair weather or foul to the end, what must we 
think of a man before we yield him up ourselves like that! 
And yet, beyond question, this is involved in the simple 
ethical decision to do his bidding. We should have to be- 
lieve in him, heart and soul, for life and death. To trust in 
Jesus as the one who leads on to life's highest development 
is to believe in him. 



[1-4] BUILDING ON ROCK 

First Week, Fourth Day 

Now there went with him great multitudes: and he 
turned, and said unto them, If any man cometh unto 
me, and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, 
and children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own 
life also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth 
not bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be 
my disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, 
doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he 
have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply, when he 
hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that 
behold begin to mock him, saying, This man began to 
build, and was not able to finish. — Luke 14:25-30. 

It is well for us to face thoughtfull}^ this undoubted saying 
of Jesus, even though .we ma}- not enjoy it. It is not and 
was not meant to be a well-balanced judicial statement. It 
is a passionate utterance of deep feeling, wrung from Jesus 
when he had been cut to the heart by the endless indifference 
and lukewarmness and self-seeking of men who rather 
fancied his teaching and dallied with his leadership. It 
means that a man cannot win the supreme achievement in 
character by halfway methods. To accept as Teacher and 
Master such a one as Jesus is a choice that strikes to the 
very root of a man's being and triumphantly outwears any 
conceivable change of time or circumstance. It is not to 
be reached without convictions utterly beyond the common. 
One must be willing to stake everything on his faith. A 
tentative trial of Jesus as Leader shows a moral indecision 
that merely dishonors him and disappoints the experimenter. 

First Week, Fifth Day 

At that season Jesus answered and said, I thank 
thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou 
didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, 
and didst reveal them unto babes: yea. Father, for so it 
was well-pleasing in thy sight. All things have been 
delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth 
the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the 
Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son 
willeth to reveal him. Come unto me, all ye that labor 
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take 
my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and 

4 



THE BACKGROUND OF FAITH {1-6] 

lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. 
For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. — Matt. 
11:25-30. 

From another angle Jesus invites men to shape their 
lives by him. All about us are those who are restless and 
discontented because of the seeming futility of life. They 
are getting on in years and yet are not accomplishing any- 
thing of consequence. They may be laying by a substantial 
property for themselves or their family, but their early 
idealism has worn out in the process and nothing else has 
come to take its place. Life for them is an enigma and so 
a burden. 

Jesus confidently asked men to take on them the yoke of 
his leadership, knowing that this Very obedience would bring 
them rest. They would be done with the haunting fear that 
they were building on sand, and would have inward assur- 
ance in all their daily work that they were building on the 
rock. They could go on with life in calm hopefulness. The 
world has proved that character like that of Jesus infallibly 
means peace and joy. Fretfulness and discontent cannot 
keep foothold in a life that breathes his spirit as its daily air. 

"In His will is our peace." — Dante. 

First Week, Sixth Day 

Now when John heard in the prison the works of the 
Christ, he sent by his disciples and said unto him, Art 
thou he that cometh, or look we for another? And Jesus 
answered and said unto them, Go and tell John the things 
which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight, and 
the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, 
and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good tid- 
ings preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever 
shall find no occasion of stumbling in me. — Matt. 11:2-6. 

It is well to be quite frank with ourselves as to whether 
we approve of Jesus as a moral guide or not. No one can 
decide the question for us — we must settle it for ourselves 
on the most practical and elementary grounds. John the 
Baptist, at a cruelly hard pinch, wanted a categorical state- 
ment as to the ground of Jesus' claims. He asked for 
dogmatic assurance. None was given. Instead, Jesus simply 

5 



[1-7] BUILDING ON ROCK 

bade him reflect on the works Jesus did, and decide the 
matter for himself. 

We have the works of Jesus before our eyes, spreading [ 
under his influence through many generations. Are we drawn 
to such a leader as he is, or do we on the whole feel distaste 
for what he stands for? Beyond question there are many, 
even in our day, who heartily dislike both him and his ways 
— though as a rule they are careful not to say so. Only if 
we are truly attached to him and to his spirit, and with 
transparent honesty long to repeat the kind of life he lived, 
can we expect to build our characters on lines of his ap- 
proving. 

The greatest contribution any man can make to society is f 
a life thoroughly mastered by His direction. 



First Week, Seventh Day 

Upon this many of his disciples went back, and walked ^ 
no more with him. Jesus said therefore unto the twelve, 
Would ye also go away? Simon Peter answered him. 
Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of 
eternal life. And we have believed and know that thou 
art the Holy One of God.— John 6:66-69. I 

1 

It is often helpful to face the sharp alternative to shaping ii 
our lives on the teaching of Jesus. Probably there are few ^' 
of us, if the truth were known, who are not tempted in cer- '] 
tain moods to distrust him as an authoritative religious ; 
guide — as though this were somehow asking too much of one I 
in this modern critical age. Very well, suppose we surrender ; 
him as a divinely sent Master ! We must look for our 1 
inspiration elsewhere. Where do we propose to look for it? 
Who is to be our guiding light in times of moral perplexity 
and moral defeat? Who shall set for us "the mark of living ; 
light, above the howling senses' ebb and flow" ? Whence I 
are we to draw, in days to come, the vivid invincible life- f 
purpose of unselfish love, that shall mould us steadily into f- 
something better than we have known? '• 

Jesus declares that his word is a rock foundation for such ■! i 
divinely tempered character. So it has been through cen- 
turies on centuries for unnumbered men and women, bene- 
factors of their race. Are we going to be able to find other 

6 



THE BACKGROUND OF FAITH [I-c] 

foundations on which we can build such a life, without his 
aid? If not, what is it in him that makes him thus indispen- 
sable? We cannot but believe that the foundation on which 
the highest development is reared is one of truth and not 
of error. 

Lord, to whom shall we go hut unto thee? Thou hast the 
words of eternal life, 

! COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

Many have seen a certain unforgettable cartoon by the 
Dutch artist, Louis Raemakers. It shows the German Kaiser 
riding down the highway on his war-horse, stern and master- 
ful, the incarnation of relentless power. Around him are 
his mounted staff, with cloaks and swords and helmets, 
silent and terrible in the pride of war. But at his side upon 
the road, trespassing on that high company, is a humble 
man mounted on an ass, as Jesus once rode in Palestine, his 
bowed face eloquent of love and sadness — the Man of Sor- 
rows. And the Kaiser, pointing indignantly to the intruder, 
exclaims to his staff, "Who is this man?" 

The biting satire lies in the exposure of a terrible illusion, 
not involving the Kaiser only. This Jesus Christ, the man 
of love, on whom the whole structure of Christianity sup- 
posedly is built, appears an unfamiliar stranger even in the 
eyes of one of the great heads of Christendom. So alien 
is the Master in his life and spirit, that he is an offense 
and a stumbling-block in the path of those who bear his 
name and sign. 

Its application is far wider than to an imperialism that had 
outlived the consent of men, yet ostentatiously counted God 
its ally. It expresses the age-old unreality of a religion 
that calls itself Christian, while yet squarely hostile to the 
ethical and social principles of Jesus. Some might say un- 
thinkingly that it exposes the breakdown of Christianity. 
Just the reverse is true. It is an eloquent affirmation of the 
impregnable truth that there is no real Christianity save in 
loyalty to the spirit of Jesus Christ, who taught us what we 
know of God. 

Historical Christianity, formal Christianity, has often been 



[I-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

something startlingly out of sympathy with the Great Teacher 
and Friend of men. It has exalted his formal requirements 
in the sacraments and institutions of the Church ; it has kept 
always in the forefront the elaborate creedal formulations 
of the church councils, but it has sometimes completely 
broken step with him in his actual life-spirit ; it has wandered 
clean away out of his company. And this haunting fear of 
unreality, that makes so many in our time suspicious of the 
Church and its requirements, is the half-perceived legacy 
from this long period of dissonance between the ideals of 
Jesus and those, of his reputed followers. 

Curiously enough, the Church has never formally put the 
ethical code of Jesus in the forefront of its teaching. The 
law once graven on stone, the Ten Commandments of Mount 
Sinai, has been taugbt to every child of the Church. Even 
today, as a part of the stated public worship, we repeat 
or sing the ancient words that forbid us to worship other 
gods, or to make graven images, or to do any work on the 
seventh day of the week. But no such place has ever been 
given to the royal law that crowned all those centuries of 
slow education and illumination — that we should love our 
neighbors as ourselves, that we should be merciful as our 
Father in heaven is merciful, that we should humble ourselves 
as little children, that we should pray to our Father, that 
we should deny ourselves for the sake of Christ and his glad 
tidings. As the result, we have seen state churches and 
national governments that stood, as the House of Hapsburg, 
for example, so long stood in the last century, with equal 
frankness and intensity for religious orthodoxy and the 
denial of the rights of the people. 

The world has been wakening very fast in the last fifty 
years to the searching demands of the real discipleship of 
Jesus, without which any church or any Christian profession 
is a sorry mockery. But only in these last few years have 
men far and wide begun to rouse themselves from the old 
inertia of long-inherited unbelief, to perceive that for na- 
tions, also, obedience to the teachings of Jesus is the only 
policy that does not set at defiance the everlasting purposes 
of God, and so invite defeat. The old selfishness of indi- 
vidual men or of corporations or of governments, alike in 
greed for money or greed for power, begins to appear today 

8 



THE BACKGROUND OF FAITH [I-c] 

as never before in history in its true light as the fundamental 
denial and betrayal of the Christian faith. We have lost 
interest in disputing about creeds, so profound has become 
our preoccupation with the primary demands of him about 
whom all creeds center. 

Do we wish to get at the heart of reality in the religion 
of Jesus? Very well, here is the summing up of the actual 
qualities of character that inevitably appear in those who 
absorb his spirit — no theoretical or ecclesiastical summary, 
but a statement out of personal experience on the part of 
one of the most sympathetically intimate friends of Jesus. 
Imagine them used as the touchstone of reality for all who 
profess and call themselves Christians! Here is the list: 
"Love, joy, peace; patience toward others, kindness, benevo- 
lence ; good faith, meekness, self-restraint." It is not meant 
to be exhaustive, but it does indicate the structural lines 
of the Christian character. 

These qualities spring up in the pathway of Jesus. Just 
as from a mountain on the desert edge you can follow the 
course of a river by the green ribbon of tree-tops winding 
across the sand, so you can follow the succession of the 
followers of Jesus through fearsome, arid centuries, when 
cruelty and violence spread like a boundless wilderness on 
either side. They made life blossom around them. Side 
by side with them there may have been this pretentious 
illusion of a Christian church full of pride and harsh 
intolerance, but, as at this day, the men and women who 
really shared the spirit of Jesus were like fountains of living 
water for thirsty men. Never has there been a doubt as to 
the character of those who actually hear and do his words — 
it is the world's most precious possession up till now. And 
it is only leadership like this which can ever bring the world 
out of the labyrinth of tangled hates and passions, through 
which it stumbles on its way today. Here is reality indeed, 
as of the supreme force in the moral universe. 

II 

It is fairly plain to most men that the genuine following 
of the teaching of Jesus leads out into character of this 
particularly high and noble type. It is not so immediately 
plain that such a life of habitual obedience to his example 

9 



[I-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

is a triumph of faith. Yet clearly enough it is only as one 
deeply believes in him that one yields up to his control for 
life the sweet freedom of self-will. 

So many of us have been accustomed to place a purely 
conventional meaning on the words, "Believe on the Lord 
Jesus Christ," that we are slow to discern how simple are 
.the essentials of that requirement. In the nature of the 
,case they must be within the reach of any honest and well- 
disposed soul face to face with a man claiming, as did Jesus, 
to be a leader sent from God. Does he commend himself 
to us or not in that august capacity? Would we be content 
to build our lives on lines of his direction? 

In certain European countries the universities were filled 
with young men looking forward to civil and military prefer- 
ment. Their governments demanded that they should be 
baptized members of the state church and should receive 
the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. They gave these out- 
ward signs of belief in Jesus Christ, as declared members of a 
Christian community. But by a large proportion of them the 
actual teachings of Jesus were viewed with derision or disgust: 
his demand for purity, for self-restraint, for self-denying 
love to the poor and weak, for a reverent and humble fellow- 
ship with God, was to them fiercely objectionable. They 
subscribed to an orthodox confession, but frankly and ener- 
getically they disbelieved in him. They might grow up to 
be strong supporters of the state church, especially for the 
sake of the common people ; but their belief in Christianity 
was a deadly illusion, full of injury to society — as this war 
has so tragically shown. 

Perhaps it hardly needs to be said that it is quite meaning- 
less for a man to believe that Jesus was the second person- 
in the Trinity and that He came to offer a substitutionary 
atonement for human sin, if his own heart is full of a 
Nietzschean pride of self-will that despises the "slave- 
morality" of the New Testament. Jesus did not build his 
discipleship on metaphysical interpretations of his relation- 
ship to God, or on any complete understanding of the depths 
of his own personality. His requirement of the right-of-way 
in a man's life was as plain and direct as a shaft of sunlight. 
Did men believe in him and in his works, so that they 
would stand with him like Athanasius against the world? 

lO 



THE BACKGROUND OF FAITH [I-c] 

Would they take up arms even against a sea of troubles, 
trusting that he would bring them victoriously through? 

The Fourth Gospel makes profound claims for the eternal 
sonship of Christ; but it states, even more explicitly than 
the other gospels, what sort of belief in him it was that Jesus 
demanded of the men of his day — not that he was the 
Messiah, a fact which through most of his ministry he studi- 
ously concealed, but that he was sent of God to reveal His 
will. The leaders of the Jews denied this ; they declared 
that he was a man of evil heart, with an evil purpose. But 
of his own truest friends Jesus said, "They believed that thou 
didst send me" (John 17:8). He wrought his mightiest 
works before the people, so he said, "that they may believe 
that thou didst send me" (John 11:42). His last prayer 
for his disciples was that they might be one in spirit with him, 
"that the world may believe that thou didst send me" (John 
17:21). He came to bring to men in darkness the light 
of the glory of God's love; he was one delegated for this 
mission. But whether he healed the sick, or raised the dead, 
or brought the wicked to penitence, the Jews would have 
none of him or of his works either. They said that he was 
a teacher of error and an emissary of the devil. They 
repudiated his leadership as men repudiate it today. Their 
unbelief did not lie in their imperfect understanding of his 
person, or their failure to recognize him as the Messiah, 
but in their moral aversion. to him and to his message. How 
could he lead them to God when they had no faith in him? 
He stood before them as he was, and they, seeing him as he 
was, looking him up and down and through and through, 
disliked him heartily. And all his messages from God broke 
hopelessly against this armor of antagonism. 

But others turned to him as a starved plant to the sun. 
He came into their life for a few hours or days and they, 
seeing him as he was, were drawn to him with all the force 
of their natures. Even though they were very ignorant and 
very vulgar, they could recognize love when they saw it — 
especially love that redeemed — and they believed in him. 
They heard him talk and watched him work, and found him 
good, and trusted that his goodness was of God. They 
wanted to be like him, even though they might have been 
parasites on society hitherto. They were eager to be what 



[I-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

he wanted them to be. So they became his, and sloAvly 
iearned with the years what manner of man he was who had 
brought them to God and God to them. They came to the 
clear assurance that, as one of them said, "God was in Christ, 
reconciling the world unto himself." 

Just here is where the reality and power of faith in Jesus 
lie: not in selecting and adopting the most nearly correct 
doctrine of all the doctrines of the person and work of 
Christ, although the value of the truth here must be past 
reckoning, but in the fundamental attitude of the soul toward 
him and his message, whether of repulsion or attraction. 
There is no manner of doubt as to what he was. His truth 
and fidelity and courage, his pity for the poor and gentleness 
with the weak, his sternness with strong oppressors and his 
fearlessness before the great, his purity and his uplifting 
love for the stained and disgraced, his matchless self-sacrifice 
for men to the very limits of life and death — we know it all ! 
Are we drawn by it to him? Do we cleave to such a one, 
as to the best that we have ever known in life? If so, we 
believe in him, as he sought to have men believe, so that 
they would hear and do his words ; not grudgingly or 
partially, but eagerly and whole-heartedly, as children who 
were coming to know God their Father. It is that inward 
choice and attachment that marks out all who are building 
life under his guidance — building character on rock. Here 
is the innermost reality of Christianity. 



12 



CHAPTER ir 

Facing toward God 

DAILY READINGS 

Before coming to the details of Jesus' program for life- 
building, we must take into view one or two of its funda- 
mental features that can never be lost from sight if we are 
to understand its preeminence in power and attractiveness. 
Just because they are so fundamental, underlying everything 
that he said and did, they are sometimes passed over by 
those in a hurry to discuss his ethics. If what we want is 
reality, we must try to get at the heart of his moral influence 
— the secret of 'that appeal which humanity has always felt to 
be unique. » 

Second Week, First Day 

And one of the scribes came, and heard them question- 
ing together, and knowing that he had answered them 
well, asked him. What commandment is the first of all? 
Jesus answered, The first is. Hear, O Israel; The Lord 
our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord 
thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and 
with ail thy mind, and with all thy strength. The second 
is this. Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There 
is none other commandment greater than these. And 
the scribe said unto him. Of a truth. Teacher, thou hast 
well said that he is one; and there is none other but 
he: and to love him with all the heart, and with all the 
understanding, and with all the strength, and to love 
his neighbor as himself, is much more than all whole 
burnt-offerings and sacrifices. And when Jesus saw that 
he answered discreetly, he said unto him. Thou art not 
far from the kingdom of God. And no man after that 
durst ask him any question. — Mark 12 : 28-34. 

13 



[II-2] BUILDING ON ROCK 

The whole aspect and orienting of any character designed 
by such an architect of lives as Jesus, must needs be facing 
toward God. It looks away to the heights. With such an 
aspect and outlook it cannot be petty or mean or selfish; 
its uplook and outreach react upon it at every point to deter- 
mine the lines of its development. In the heart of the dirty, 
crowded city of Naples, there is a fine old medieval palace, 
with stately marble apartments, shut in now by tenements. 
But one knows instantly that, when its walls went up, they 
must have looked proudly far away across the sea and plain 
to the slopes of Vesuvius and the blue of the Mediterranean. 
Only a noble setting could call for such a noble structure. 
And for the noblest life, only the high and holy presence 
of God gives scope and verge enough for man's capacity. 
Walk before God, is the first command of Jesus. Relate 
your life each day to his will. Live in his love. It is the 
plan of a genius for life-building, who thinks only in terms 
of great living, and is unconscious of any dividing line 
between religion and morals. 

Second Week, Second Day 

And behold, a certain lav^er stood up and made trial 
of him, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal 
life? And he said unto him, What is written in the law? 
how readest thou? And he answering said, Thou shalt 
love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all 
thy soul, and vdth all thy strength, and v/ith all thy 
mind; and thy neighbor as thyself. And he said unto 
him, Thou hast answered right: this do, and thou shalt 
live. — Luke 10:25-28. 

It is not only the realized presence of God that reacts so 
profoundly on human character. Jesus said that to love 
God was also possible — and if so, surely this is the highest 
possible function of the human spirit. We know what the 
love of money will do for a man, how gravely it affects his 
character. Jesus knew what the love of God would do for 
one, how it would ennoble him as no other imaginable in- 
fluence could do. To know him, to reverence him, to hold 
to him with pride and joy, as a true son honors a good 
father, is in fact to place one's life under an inspiration of 
incalculable power. 

14 



^FACING TOWARD GOD {ll-z\ 

We commonly think of this saying of Jesus as a command, 
as the first of all commands. But as life goes on we come 
to see that it conveys not so much a duty as an invitation 
and an inexhaustible reassurance. It is the Magna Charta of 
human life. It is our title of nobility. God wants us ! He 
has made us for himself. Our filial obedience and love are 
of absolute worth to him. Each day's commonplace round 
is prefaced by this sublime greeting from the Eternal, "Live 
this day for Me." 

O God! may I be strong and brave this day in the thought 
that I am thy child, and that thou carcst for my love. May 
the spirit: of noblesse oblige be a ceaseless call to higher 
living. 

Second Week, Third Day 

Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shah love thy 
tieighbor, and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you, Love 
your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you; that 
ye may be sons of your Father who is in heaven: for 
he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and 
sendeth rain on the just and the unjust. For if ye love 
them that love you, what reward have ye? do not even 
the publicans the same? And if ye salute your brethren 
only, what do ye more than others? do not even the 
Gentiles the same? Ye therefore shall be perfect, as 
your heavenly Father is perfect. — Matt. 5 : 43-48. 

It is of the first importance to remember that a Christian 
character can never be built up out of mere obedience to a 
code of formal rules, even such rules as were given by Jesus. 
The spirit and motive of the new life are its most vital charac- 
teristic. Most of the ethical and social precepts of Jesus can 
be paralleled from other sources. His unapproached suprem- 
acy as a religious teacher does not lie in the- originality 
of his ethics, but in the new sanctions that he brought to 
duty, and in the dynamic energy of the spirit and motive 
with which he reenforced it. 

He did not come to bring a new law — even a superlatively 
good law. Nor did he leave his disciples struggling in the 
old morass of legalism, in the effort to win God's favor by 
the sheer weight of their well-deserving. He came to trans- 

15 



[II-4] BUILDING ON ROCK 

form life by bringing, as he said, a gospel! What it is lies 
open to our sight in his revelation of God as our Father, 
who loves us in spite of our failures, who has mercy on us 
and forgives us freely. "Be merciful," he says, "even as 
your Father is merciful." "Love your enemies . . . that ye 
may be sons of your Father." This proud, glad motive, 
humble and grateful, is the only motive on which a truly 
Christian character can be built up. The spirit of a spontane- 
ous gratitude and love lies behind every stage of its con- 
struction. 

Second Week, Fourth Day 

And he spake unto them this parable, saying, What 
man of you, having, a hundred sheep, and having lost 
one of them, doth not leave the ninety and nine in the 
wilderness, and go after that which is lost, until he find 
it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his 
shoulders, rejoicing. And when he cometh home, he 
calleth together his friends and his neighbors, saying unto 
them. Rejoice with me, for I have found my sheep which 
was lost. I say unto you, that even so there shall be 
joy in heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than 
over ninety and nine righteous persons, who need no 
repentance. — Luke 15:3-7. 

These three parables of grace stand in a vital relation to 
the type of character that Jesus would build up in men. 
He constantly affirmed that the life of a man should be 
rooted in the love of God. But what sort of a God is he 
thinking of, v/ho thus lays claim on the devotion of men 
and women here on earth? The reasonableness of Jesus' 
insistence depends altogether on the character of the One to 
whom, he says, men should give a filial loyalty. And these 
simple stories in Luke are a revelation of the appealing truth, 
almost past believing in its gladness for humanity, that God 
is like that father of the wastrel son, thinking of him and 
yearning after him in his shame and disobedience; so that 
when the boy turned again home, the father ran and fell 
on his neck and kissed him and royally forgave. Our whole 
life is to be spent in the presence of such a God as that. 
Every day his love is our possession, and every day we face 
his compassionate sympathy for men and women at our side. 

16 



FACING TOWARD GOD [II-5] 

Such a faith as that must needs have a tremendous reaction 
on character, through every day of living. 

Second Week, Fifth Day 

Beloved, let us love one another: for love is of God; 
and every one that loveth is begotten of God, and 
knoweth God. He that loveth not knoweth not God; for 
God is love. Herein was the love of God manifested 
in us, that God hath sent his only begotten Son into the 
world that we might live through him. Herein is love, 
not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent 
his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if 
God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. — 
I John 4: 7-1 1. 

We cannot leave this phase of our subject without consider- 
ing the bearing on it of Jesus' own life and death. In some 
respects this is the most important element in his ethical 
and social message, because it is the most dynamic. And 
only a certain subtle form of cowardice could lead us to 
leave it out of sight for fear of clinging doctrines. What 
he was and did has a moral significance and power for 
character-building quite above any sermon he ever preached 
or any illuminating story he told. 

He has lett on men's minds the inextinguishable convic- 
tion that he was himself the revelation of the character of 
God. His graciousness with men, his sympathy for their 
needs and sorrows, his love for the common people, his 
self-sacrifice to the uttermost limit, all express the loving- 
kindness of his Father, whose will he did. So that if we 
believe in Jesus as a teacher, we cannot think of God apart 
from the story of his life. And it is inevitable that till the 
end of time, and through all the ebb and flow of theological 
discussion, the mystery of his death should most hold men's 
attention, because of the amazing comfort of what it reveals 
of God — namely, that God loves men even to the point of 
suffering with their sorrow. The whole motif of Jesus' pro- 
gram for human life is love, and the early friends of Jesus 
felt, and said, that only as they came to understand Jesus' 
death did they know what love meant. 

This may be beyond our present interest and understand- 

17 



[II-6] BUILDING ON ROCK 

ing. If so, let it wait to find its own place as the years pass 
and life unrolls its meaning. 

Second Week, Sixth Day 

Now after John was delivered up, Jesus came into 
Galilee, preaching the gospel of God, and saying. The 
time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: 
repent ye, and believe in the gospel. — Mark i: 14, 15. 

And the Pharisees and their scribes murmured against 
his disciples, saying, Why do ye eat and drink with the 
publicans and sinners? And Jesus answering said unto 
them. They that are in health have no need of a physician; 
but they that are sick. I am not come to call the right- 
eous but sinners to repentance. — Luke 5:30-32. 

There is one command of Jesus that seems logically to 
precede even the great invitation we have been considering. 
There is no doubt as to what command he laid first on 
him who would build a life that should be imperishable. It 
stood in the forefront of his earliest message, "Repent ye 
and believe in the gospel." It lay behind his teaching all 
along, and among his last words to his friends was the 
bidding that repentance and forgiveness of sins should be 
preached in his name to all nations. 

Break with your past, so far as it is evil. It is the first 
test of genuineness in all religion. Open wide the way of 
return to God. Face around squarely toward him. All 
discussion of social or ethical duties is futile if one is con- 
sciously holding on to some element of disobedience to God's 
will. If enough light has broken in on us to show that 
we are doing wrong, first get right with God, so Jesus says, 
before inquiring curiously where further light will lead. 
Honesty involves repentance as the first step toward charac- 
ter, for men or nations. 

We should lose the eff'ect of this message if we did not 
couple it, as Jesus did, with belief in the glad tidings. John 
preached a repentance based on fear of judgment. Jesus 
preached a repentance in joy at the good news. Because 
God's kingdom was at hand, because his love gave assurance 
of a new day of moral triumph for men, they were to turn 
their backs on the old disappointing past. 

18 



FACING TOWARD GOD [II-7] 

Second Week, Seventh Day 

And he entered and was passing through Jericho. And 
behold, a man called by name Zacchaeus; and he was a 
chief publican, and he was rich. And he sought to see 
Jesus who he was; and could not for the crowd, because 
he was little of stature. And he ran on before, and 
climbed up into a sycomore tree to see him: for he was 
to pass that way. And when Jesus came to the place, 
he looked up, and said unto him, Zacchaeus, make haste, 
and come down; for to-day I must abide at thy house. 
And he made haste, and came down, and received him 
joyfully. And when they saw it, they all murmured, 
saying, He is gone in to lodge with a man that is a 
sinner. And Zacchaeus stood, and said unto the Lord, 
Behold, Lord, the half of my goods I give to the poor; 
and if I have wrongfully exacted aught of any man, I 
restore fourfold. And Jesus said unto him. To-day is 
salvation come to this house, forasmuch as he also is 
a son of Abraham. For the Son of man came to seek 
and to save that which was lost. — Luke 19: i-io. 

Jesus spent a single night at the home of a rich grafter 
who had never even seen him before that day. We do not 
know what passed between them or how late into the night 
they talked. Coming as his friendly guest, it is doubtful if 
Jesus exposed his sins or urged repentance. It was not 
necessary. In the morning, Zacchaeus stood before Jesus 
as they said good-by, and heroically took on him the strange 
yoke of Christian love. The shameful past, whose avarice 
and selfishness had become to him a second nature, he 
utterly forsook. He turned about so completely that in his 
own town he must have been a nine days' wonder. And so, 
repenting, he found the heavenly way wide open for him 
who had long been a wastrel and a slacker. 

And this is the influence that radiates from Jesus Christ 
wherever he is present — a suggestion, an invitation, a com- 
pelling attraction, to repentance. One may widely discuss 
his person and his message without feeling it ; but one cannot 
spend even a few hours, like Zacchaeus, in his actual com- 
pany, without shame that he is not better than he is, and a 
true longing to draw nearer God. It is something far deeper 
than a command — it is at once a divine compulsion and a 
divine energy. 

19 



[II-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

Many a country lad left his home to follow the lure of 
the sea, in the old days of sailing ships, thinking that all 
that was needed to make him as good a sailor as the best 
was to know his ship and her rigging and her behavior, and 
how to handle her skilfully in all sorts of weather — only 
to discover very soon that he could never make a master 
mariner without a knowledge of the heavens, too, and of 
the distant constellations of the night, and of the use of 
logarithms, so as to be able to calculate his position from 
the sun and stars, and thus be able to find his way across 
the world. No conceivable mastery of the technique of 
the ship could make him a good seaman without the higher 
knowledge of navigation, to enable him to put his seaman- 
ship to useful purpose. 

There are many in our day who would gladly take over 
the ethics of Jesus without his religion. The one seems to 
be within their reach, the other they are doubtful about. 
They covet his friendliness and sympathy with men, his truth 
and strength and courage, in its beauty and perfection. They 
would willingly take him as their example. But we no 
sooner come to any honest attempt to imitate Jesus Christ 
than we discover that we must begin further back than with 
his outward acts — that his life and teaching are inseparable 
from those deep-seated religious convictions that made him 
what he was. His ethics are so interwoven with his religion 
that you simply cannot have one without the other. 

The very atmosphere in which he lived and moved was 
that of the encompassing presence of God. The strength 
and gladness of it colored all his thought and speech and 
action. The reflected peace and kindness of his Father's 
love shone unmistakably in all his relations with men and 
women. He was not carrying out a scheme of social uplift, 
there in Galilee ; he was living out the spirit of the Father 
of the household, whom he knew so well. His life faced 
toward God every day, as a flower faces toward the sun. And 
one could as easily get the fragrance and color of a rose 
without the sunlight as reproduce the beauty of Jesus' charac- 
ter without the simple faith in Almighty Love from which 

20 



FACING TOWARD GOD [II-c] 

it sprang. If Jesus had one day trusted in his Father's 
guidance, and the next had wondered whether there could 
be any personal God behind this sorry scheme of things, he 
never would have been a helper of distressed men, or a 
clear light for unnumbered generations groping in the dark. 

It is futile to talk about obeying the words of Jesus, or 
following his leadership, unless we place at the beginning 
the first and great commandment, as he did. No other treat- 
ment of his commands is either honest or intelligent. We 
may be in a hurry to get at the actual technique of social 
service; but there is no shorter way to follow him in this 
than the one that he so clearly indicated. Clubs for ethical 
or social culture one may join without having any definite 
views as to the nature of God ; one may even insist that the 
latter are quite unnecessary. But we cannot go two steps 
in honest obedience to Jesus Christ without perceiving that 
our attitude toward God is of the very essence of our disciple- 
ship. He leaves us in no doubt that we are building all our 
life on the sand, if we turn away from his first and constant 
insistence upon loving trust in the eternal Righteousness, 
who, as our Father, has made us for himself. 

If we cannot follow Jesus at this point, then, for the 
deeper issues oi life, we must follow some other leader. 
Herbert Spencer, for example, would spare us this embarrass- 
ment. If we could drink from him the inspiration and moral 
power to make us what we want to be, then we could go on 
with our character-building free from concern as to any 
Heavenly Father, or our duties to Him. But as a river of 
living water, Herbert Spencer bids fair to run out rather 
quickly among the sands. Jesus continues, a river of life 
for human society. But his social message, like his personal 
life, is inseparable from this confidence in God. Rock-built 
character starts further back and lower down than any 
generous impulse to benevolence. 

II 

This conviction of Jesus, rooted in his own experience, 
is reflected in the command which he lays first of all on men, 
"Thou shalt love the Lord thy God." We are so familiar 
with it that it is hard for us to realize how unapproachably 
unique it is among all the commands that have been given 

9.1 



[II-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

to men. In reality it is hardly so much a command as a 
title-deed and a glorious credential for mankind — a credential 
of divine heredity. Manifestly it knits up humanity with 
God, Fixed as we are here on earth among material condi- 
tions, with our close relation to a material environment 
v/ritten in our very bodies, this ancient word from God 
sounds on from age to age, proclaiming the majesty of our 
spirits and giving the lie to all the forces of earthliness and 
pessimism that would claim men for any lesser estate. It 
claims us as God's own. Nothing of human limitation or 
failure can dim the glory of its promise. 

The great law-givers of the nations — like Buddha or Con- 
fucius or Muhammad — were content for the most, part to 
exact obedience from their followers. They do not ask for 
love. Only one asks ' for that, and Jesus called him our 
Father. We recognize at once that if he asks for love it 
must be because he loves, and therefore craves response, as 
does our poor human fatherhood. It is only his fatherly 
heart that makes our true affection of consequence to him. 
The gods of Greece and Rome and of our own forefathers 
did not ask for such a thing as that. Love is, so to speak, 
a family matter, and Zeus and Thor were separated from 
their worshipers by an abyss ; unknown and awful, they 
laid on men their commands, but asked no nearer intimacy. 

But Jesus declared that God so thinks of us that, first of 
all, he asks us for our love. Surely he does not do it, as 
some theologies have suggested, to mock us with our de- 
pravity and abject inability to respond; but only because we 
are able to yield what gives him joy. Men may despise 
themselves or cynically condemn their fellows, but there is 
not one so low that God does not invite him to this tran- 
scendent fellowship. This very command, that Jesus kept 
in the forefront of life's obligations, declares everlastingly 
what value God sets upon us, and what kinship of spirit he 
recognizes even among the most depraved. It makes it 
impossible for us to think cheaply of ourselves or to despise 
the poor and ignorant. It binds us all up together in a 
family of divine lineage. We may think out the implications 
of it very slowly or imperfectly, but the command itself is 
like a shaft of sunlight falling in a dark place. And the 
dullest man can see how character-building is a different thing 

22 



FACING TOWARD GOD [II-c] 

if it starts with the inspiration of a royal summons such 
as this. 

Ill 

It is a fair thing to ask whether there is, in prosaic fact, 
any real content to this mysterious duty of loving an Unseen 
Spirit. Apart from the common duties of life to the people 
of flesh and blood about us, is there a "something more" 
that God asks for, as if due directly to himself? We like 
to think that we can best show our reverence for any un- 
known Spirit of Good by a life of honor and truth and 
justice toward our fellows; and that perhaps it is unneces- 
sary, beyond this, to make exacting demands on faith, as 
though he expected of us something more than fidelity to 
the duties well within our understanding. Life would cer- 
tamly be simpler if it needed to take no note of any demands 
upon it beyond those we can see and measure and under- 
stand with our physical senses. 

But the answer is that we simply cannot narrow life to 
these dimensions. Men have never been able to do it, and 
are not able to do it now. Even savage races have the idea 
of this "something more" that is expected of them if all is 
to go well. And when we come to the experience and example 
of Jesus, an unmistakable master in the things of the spirit, 
we cannot begin to consider him without having this element 
in his life thrust on our attention. The unseen Spirit whom 
he called his Father played at least as active a part in his. 
life as did Peter,, or any of his daily companions. There 
seems to have been a constant reciprocity of thought and 
feeling between them. Jesus gave to him his confidence, 
obedience, affection, and received from him direction and 
assistance, besides the sympathy and cheer that made him 
the joyful man he was. From one point of view, Jesus' 
whole life seems to have been given to his self-forgetful 
ministry to the needs of men and women about him. He 
lived in others and in the duties of here and now. And yet 
it is equally certain that the whole outflow of his generous 
activity was fed by this inner fountain of a divine, affec- 
tionate intimacy that never faltered. 

This very element, that made his life the marvel that 
it was, he declares should be the controlling element in the 

23 



[II-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

life of every man. And if there is such a God and Father 
as he believed, we cannot escape the same conclusion. We 
have an unescapable duty of conscious filial fellowship with 
him. God has made us for himself, so Jesus said. He wants 
us — wants our confidence, our obedience, our affection — 
wants our spiritual fellowship. And so Jesus urged men to 
draw closer to God; urged them to talk with him: to talk 
with him freely of their lives — of their needs and ambitions, 
even of their shameful failures. He tried to bring them 
iiato a relation of happy and trustful association with God, 
as of a son with a father, so that the powerful influence of 
that high and holy Spirit might penetrate them through and 
through. He wanted them to forget themselves in loving 
service to their fellowmen. Assuredly so ! But he wanted 
them to achieve this through their being rooted and grounded 
in love themselves, as they lived each day in the enjoyment 
of God's goodness. 

It is a weary business, sometimes, to walk by faith. But 
can you see any way to avoid it if one is to be what Jesus 
wanted men to be? If we are to achieve what he said was 
possible for men, then every day we have need to walk con- 
sciously with our Father as well as with our fellowmen. 
We are not to wait till this life is through before we begin 
the intimacies of the eternal life. Here and now we are to 
be in living touch with the Almighty. 

One is reluctantly obliged to admit that this acquaintance 
and fellowship are not for the most part what we would 
have them. Let us frankly admit that our limitations are 
painfully oppressive. We would like to have such an ecstatic 
and overwhelmingly convincing experience of God as would 
make him the chief object in our field of consciousness, 
reassuring us once for all, and relieving us of the lifelong 
struggle for faith in so contrary a world as this. But most 
of us are not religious geniuses, like Paul, and some of us 
are the very opposite of mystical, both by temperament and 
training. And even Paul said that now we know in part, 
and at best see darkly as in a mirror. 

We shall always have to make the effort of attention and 
spiritual concentration in order to realize our Father's love 
or to talk with him, as it were face to face. We shall 
always have to fight a good fight of faith for this divine 

24 



FACING TOWARD GOD [II-c] 

reenforcement of character, and our daily attainments and 
experiences in this field, taken one by one, may seem to us 
humiliatingly small and insignificant. Yet in the long run, 
year after year, they serve to bind us up with God in thought 
and purpose and — at the long last — in character. Never yet 
was there a great saint who was satisfied with his attainments 
in this heavenly intimacy of the child with the heavenly 
Father. And yet it is the sublimest element in the life of the 
soul, and of an infinite potency. As Edwin Markham has 
expressed it in one of his later poems : 

"The builder who first bridged Niagara's gorge, 
Before he swung his cable, shore to shore, 
Sent out across the gulf his venturing kite 
Bearing a slender cord for unseen hands 
To grasp upon the further cliff and draw 
A greater cord, and then a greater yet ; 
Till at the last across the chasm swung 
The cable — then the mighty bridge in air ! 

So we may send our little timid thought 
Across the void, out to God's reaching hands — 
Send out our love and faith to thread the deep — 
• Thought after thought until the little cord 
Has greatened to a chain no chance can break, 
And — we are anchored to the Infinite!" 



25 



CHAPTER III 

Facing toward Man 

DAILY READINGS 

Third Week, First Day 

Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. — Matt. 22:39. 

If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, 
but have not love, I am become sounding brass, or a 
clanging cymbal. And if I have the gift of prophecy, 
and know all mysteries and all knowledge; and if I have 
all faith; so as to remove mountains, but have not love, 
I am nothing. And if I bestow all my goods to feed the 
poor, and if I give my body to be burned, but have not 
love, it profiteth me nothing. — I Cor. 13:1-3. 

It is not strange that the real religion of Jesus Christ 
has never been popular. It is too costly — it requires too much 
of human nature. It needs to be ingeniously shaded off into 
something less exacting if it is to have much success as a 
popular faith or a state creed. The constructive principle 
of all character building under Jesus Christ is love — love 
both for our Father and for all the Father's children. And 
love, as we all know, is not easy to come by. It cannot be 
pumped up mechanically to meet the demand, as can any 
kind of religiosity or compliance with external requirements. 
A man can be a fanatic in religion and yet wholly fail to 
know what love is. 

Jesus said, over and over again, that the very warp and 
woof of a right life was kindness to one's neighbor. It 
must be the outstanding, unmistakable note of a Christian 
life or a Christian church, of Christian society or a Christian 
state. Worship and creed and sacraments have their place, 
and often they have quite filled the thought of religious 
leaders. But we are compelled to see, when we get close 

26 



FACING TOWARD MAN fIII-2] 

to the teaching and example of Jesus Christ, that love comes 
first of all. 

We can only notice here that Jesus calls for this un- 
selfish affection toward God and man alike, without a thought 
of separation between the two obligations. The social side 
of religion can never be lost sight of by a real disciple of 
Jesus. One might as well claim to love his father and mother 
truly, and yet despise his brothers and sisters in whose 
welfare his parents are wrapped up. All the long education 
of the ages, so Jesus said, was summed up in this attitude 
of soul, toward the God whom we have never seen and the 
men and women whom we know so well. 

Third Week, Second Day 

Jesus made answer and said, A certain man was going 
down from Jerusalem to Jericho; and he fell among 
robbers, who both stripped him and beat him, and de- 
parted, leaving him half dead. And by chance a certain 
priest was going down that way: and when he saw him, 
he passed by on the other side. And in like manner a 
Levite also, when he came to the place, and saw him, 
passed by on the other side. But a certain Samaritan, 
as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw 
him, he was moved with compassion, and came to him, 
and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine; 
and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an 
inn, and took care of him. And on the morrow he took 
out two shillings, and gave them to the host, and said. 
Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, 
I, when I come back again, will repay thee. Which of 
these three, thinkest thou, proved neighbor unto him 
that fell among the robbers? And he said, He that 
showed mercy on him. And Jesus said unto him. Go, and 
do thou likewise. — Luke 10:30-37. 

So long as men live, this simple story will bind their 
consciences. Because, for all that it is a story, it declares 
the will of God as categorically as the ten words of Sinai. 
Its terrible irony burns like vitriol. Its quiet commendation 
is like ■ a distinguished service order from God. And yet, 
though everyone in our day is compelled to applaud it, it 
is like one of the thoughts of God in its unlikeness to 
ordinary human behavior. Its purpose is to point out who 

27 



[111-3] BUILDING ON ROCK 

our neighbor is whom we are called to love — simply the one 
who needs our help, the one whom no self-interest draws 
us on to aid, but who makes claim on us in his trouble just 
as a brother in God's human family. 

It needs a touch of the divine compassion in order to meet 
this test. We Americans are enjoying our altruism toward 
the Belgians and Armenians, as evidence of our disinterested- 
ness. But how about our treatment of the Negroes and In- 
dians and Chinese and Mexicans? Have we played the 
Good Samaritan toward them? This half-murdered Jew in 
the story was of a race highly distasteful to his benefactor, 
and yet he had pity on him. Have we a love for our 
neighbor that actually crosses the border of our tastes and 
training, and kindles our imagination to the wrongs of 
people whose interests are by no means parallel to our own? 
That is what Jesus asks for as the habitual temper of those 
who would build character on the rock of God's approval. 

After all, the parable is not one for an easy popularity, 
save as we apply it to others rather than ourselves. 

Third Week, Third Day 

Then said Jesus unto his disciples, If any man would 
come after me, let him deny himself, and take up his 
cross, and follow me. For whosoever would save his life 
shall lose it: and whosoever shall lose his life for my 
sake shall find it. For what shall a man be profited, if 
he shall gain the whole world, and forfeit his life? or 
what shall a man give in exchange for his life? — Matt. 
i6: 24-26. 

This command is, so to speak, the converse of the one 
just under discussion. A Christian must love his neighbor; 
that means, in practice, that he must forget himself. There 
is not much room for discussion of the matter. The neces- 
sity involved may be distinctly disagreeable, but it is plain 
as day. If one is to be genuinely concerned for others, it 
means that his own selfish concerns must retire a little into 
the background. He must deliberately put himself out of the 
road as an absorbing interest. 

Denying self does not mean, as it has so often been inter- 
preted to mean, making oneself unhappy or miserable. Some 
of those old Christian ascetics, who slowly tortured them- 

28 



FACING TOWARD MAN IIII-4] 

selves for years, seem to us to have been supremely self- 
centered. They were thinking of themselves and their piety 
above everything else. Jesus insists that his disciples must 
lose sight of themselves in something else that appeals to 
them just as much — in his kingdom and his little ones. There 
is nothing about this that is unnatural or harsh. We are 
not to impoverish or to afflict ourselves, but to find rich and 
eager satisfaction in following him in his ministry of love. 
To be actually in a good fellowship of daily service with 
that great Friend would be as satisfying in America today 
as in the Gahlee of long ago. 

O Lord! teach me this day thy joy of self -for get fulness 
in a service of God and man that shall grow more glad and 
more engrossing year, by year. 

Third Week, Fourth Day 

And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye 
also to them likewise. And if ye love them that love 
you, what thank have ye? for even sinners love those 
that love them. And if ye do good to them that do 
good to you, what thank have ye? for even sinners do 
the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope 
to receive, what thank have ye? even sinners lend to 
sinners, to receive again as much. But love your enemies, 
and do them good, and lend, never despairing; and your 
reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most 
High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil. — 
Luke 6:31-35. 

We all agree that this is a wonderful saying. It reaches 
to the heart of the social problem in all its Protean forms. 
A man who really shaped his character on these lines would 
be a singularly pleasant neighbor, and a whole community 
of such people would be almost too ideally agreeable for 
belief. And yet, for most people, the Golden Rule is a little 
like the multiplication table — its truth is cheerfully conceded, 
but it is too familiar to be interesting, and it has pretty well 
ceased to be stimulating to the imagination. 

Jesus, however, lays it down as one of the formative 
principles of character, and as such it takes daily issue with 
our indolent preoccupation with our own interests. If we 
let our imagination work upon it even for a few moments, 

29 



[I1I-5] BUILDING ON ROCK 

it becomes almost unpleasantly suggestive. Most of us get 
along with it peaceably as Christians, only by taking it for 
granted as a truism. But as soon as we begin in an emer- 
gency to act on Charles Reade's motto, "Put yourself in his 
place," and try to obey the word of Jesus from that enlight- 
ened viewpoint, we find it of an extraordinary freshness, 
disturbingly fruitful in suggestion. It is the revelation of 
one of God's thoughts for us, and so it often brings us 
to confusion by very contrast with our own. 

Third Week, Fifth Day 

If therefore thou art offering thy gift at the altar, and 
there rememberest that thy brother hath aught against 
thee, leave there thy gift before the altar, and go thy 
way, first be reconciled to thy brother, and then come 
and offer thy gift. — Matt. 5 : 23, 24. 

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for 
ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left un- 
done the weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, 
and faith: but these ye ought to have done, and not to 
have left the other undone. Ye blind guides, that strain 
out the gnat, and swallow the camel! — Matt. 23:23, 24. 

How much in earnest Jesus was in these commands ap- 
pears from such sayings as the two quoted above. Men 
have always tended to believe that duties to God were more 
important than duties to men, that it was more necessary 
to propitiate him than to be right with one's fellows — some- 
what as we all feel that it is better policy to stand in with 
the strong than with the weak. In all lands the priesthood 
has at times led the faithful to believe that full tithes to 
God were a more sacred obligation than full wages to 
laborers. 

Jesus disgusted the religious leaders of his day by affirming 
the opposite. He declared justice to men to be a first duty 
to God. Scrupulous religious tithes, without justice and mercy 
to the poor, he said were a disgrace. The man in the 
trenches is in sympathy with Jesus when he feels instinctively 
that a good man is a big-hearted man, and a good pal, and a 
true friend. If religion gets in the way of one's sympathies 
with his fellows, something is the matter with the religion. 

Jesus plainly says that lack of fair dealing with men will 

30 



Jh'ACING TOWARD MAN [111-6] 

spoil a man's approach to Gcd. Many a student, unable to 
find God, thinks that he is held back by doctrinal or philo- 
sophical difficulties, when the heart of the trouble is in his 
wrong or selfish treatment of his neighbor. One cannot 
cheat a professor — perhaps even a corporation — and yet find 
God readily in prayer. Christian character is character that 
fiiids an unobsfructed way to God in its largehearted fairness 
to men. 

Third Week, Sixth Day 

But when the Son of man shall come in his glory, and 
all the angels with him, then shall he sit on the throne 
of his glory: and before him shall be gathered all the 
nations: and he shall separate them one from another, 
as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats; 
and he shall set the sheep on his right hand, but the 
goats on the left. Then shall the King say unto them 
on his right hand. Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit 
the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of 
the world: for I was hungry, and ye gave me to eat; 
I was thirsty, and ye gave me drink; I was a stranger, 
and ye took me in; naked, and ye clothed me; I was 
sick, and ye visited me; I was in prison, and ye came 
unto me. Then shall the righteous answer him, saying. 
Lord, when saw we thee hungry, and fed thee? or 
athirst, and gave thee drink? And when saw we thee a 
stranger, and took thee in? or naked, and clothed thee? 
And when saw we thee sick, or in prison, and came unto 
thee? And the King shall answer and say unto them. 
Verily I say unto you. Inasmuch as ye did it unto one 
of these my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me. 
— Matt. 25:31-40. 

Of all the sayings of Jesus perhaps none has left a deeper 
mark on selfish humanity than this. Even though we have 
been at war, even though a great part of Christendom has 
seemed to be running amuck against its underlying conten- 
tion of mercy to the weak, never has its influence been so 
profoundly felt as at this day. And the new day of recon- 
struction will draw this headstrong world a little nearer than 
it has ever been to the thought of the speaker of this parable. 

Even though this is what might be called a popular teach- 
ing, it is a marvelous revelation of realities undreamed of 



[III-7] BUILDING ON ROCK 

by the multitude. If it means anything, it means that our 
suffering world is all bound up in its interest with the unseen 
spiritual world. What goes on here is noted there. The 
sick, the prisoners, the starving, the miserable, are God's 
little ones. Who ministers to them, ministers to the great 
Friend of men. Who loves them, is the friend of God. To 
our natural benevolence it adds this glorious and compelling 
motive for compassion. 

And on the other hand this one word "inasmuch" deepens 
the guilt of those who, m their march to power, ride down 
God's little ones. Brutalities against the weak are bad 
enough, but when, in their wretched persons, one strikes at 
the Lord of the Kingdom, then even imperialism might well 
shrink back in dread from ambitions that involve trampling 
on the poor. 

The disciple of Jesus is one who honestly looks to see his 
Lord's face in the faces of those who by their helplessness 
mutely plead with us for help. 

Third Week, Seventh Day 

And he came to Nazareth, where he had been brought 
up: and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue 
on the sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there 
was delivered unto him the book o£ the prophet Isaiah. 
And he opened the book, and found the place where it 
was written, 

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, 

Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the 
poor: 

He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives. 

And recovering of sight to the blind. 

To set at liberty them that are bruised. 

To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord. 

And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attend- 
ant, and sat down: and the eyes of all in the synagogue 
were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them. 
To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears. — 
Luke 4: 16-21. 

We should fail to get the full effect of these commands 
of Jesus, did we not reenforce them by the lesson and 
example of his life. After all, we must surely understand 

32 



FACING TOWARD MAN [III-c] 

by what he himself did and was, what he would have us 
do and be. And it is a perpetual refreshment to noble living 
to remember what use Jesus made of his few years among 
men. In the verses quoted above, he tells us what life meant 
for him — for a young man in the full flush of health, with 
popularity and influence opening before him. He was not 
thinking how to squeeze life's orange of its last drop of 
satisfaction for himself. He was not thinking of himself 
at all — he was forgetting himself as he bids us do — but he 
was completely mastered by his sympathy for his brothers 
and sisters, not for the care-free and rich, but for the poor 
and ignorant and oppressed, whose cry went up before God 
as the endless cry of an unknown multitude goes up* today in 
sorrow. Life, to his generous soul, meant the chance to help 
and save. And he spent himself, to the utmost limit, to 
bring men home to God and to God's peace. So his life 
reenforced his words. It utterly overflowed them and sur- 
passed them. It made forever plain as the sun what his 
religion was and of what character his followers must be. 

He who zvould build upon the rock must somehow find 
the way to deny himself and, like his Master^ live in the 
open sunlight of love to God and men. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

What a place this world of men would be by now if the 
Christian Church had always kept within sight of Jesus' 
primary requirement of his disciples ! We may talk as much 
as we will of the beauty and simplicity of the Galilean Gospel, 
but, when it comes to actual living, there is something in 
human nature that makes it edge away in practice from the 
Sermon on the Mount, and prefer almost any substitute for 
the searching demands for love to God and man. Senti- 
mentally or theoretically they are very agreeable to contem- 
plate, and men willingly approve them ; but they go right 
to the heart of human deficiency and weakness, and expose 
our need of a divine cooperation if we are to obey them 
successfully. 

Apparently, in the past, men have preferred any degree 
of complexity or difficulty or dogmatic severity in their 

32, 



[III-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

religion, to this simple summing up of its essential meaning. 
Indeed, as we look at church history, that touching saying 
of Jesus the night before his death, "By this shall all men 
know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to 
another," seems like a biting sarcasm. And in spite of every 
fear or disappointment that men may feel about the Church 
of today, there is reason for inexpressible gratitude and 
encouragement that we are giving heed as never before to 
this insistent central teaching of our Lord and Master. We 
do not need to try to be more spiritual or more profound 
than he was himself, and we cannot go far wrong if we 
daily keep in sight of the example and spirit of his life. 
No doubt we shall suffer many limitations from our ignorance 
and our dull blundering grasp on great truths, but we shall 
at least be saved from that fatal betrayal of his cause which 
is written all too plainly across centuries of ecclesiastical 
history. 

It may free us from the vagueness of mere suspicion in 
this matter, and from uncertainty as to the justice of such 
reflection on the past, if we look intently for a moment at 
the actually prevailing standards of character in the Christian 
Church at a far-off time that yet resembled the present, when 
civilization was actually threatened by Goth and Hun and 
when the Church's constructive and resistant power needed 
to be at its highest. Take the latter half of the fourth 
century, when the early Church was still fresh and strong — 
as we suppose — and had not had time to outgrow the cleans- 
ing fires of three hundred years of persecution. 

It is, of course, difficult to get a fair insight into the 
actual thought and life of the time. But we can at least 
get a true picture of the conditions prevailing in the organ- 
ized church from the full biographies and letters and writ- 
ings of the six great religious leaders of that period — 
Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine in the west, and Basil. 
Gregory, and Chrysostom in the east. They show at least 
in faithful detail what church life meant to them in their 
associations with their fellow-clergy. Only one word can 
sum up what it meant, and that is, strife — not strife with the 
heathen, or with the civil power, but with their fellow-Chris- 
tians ; not strife that was wholesome or constructive, but 
strife bitter and destructive and often venomous. They were 

34 



FACING TOWARD MAN [III-c] 

good men, but their lives were one long battle against envy, 
slander, and abuse, against bribery and violence and blood- 
shed, at the hands of their fellow-leaders of the Church. As 
Basil wrote pathetically, after one of his journeys among 
the clergy of the Eastern churches, "Each is more eager about 
his own wrath than his own salvation ; each aims his sting 
against his neighbor." 

Doctrinal discussion in the search for heresy was the 
chief intellectual occupation of the age, and in it truth and 
decency were largely flung to the winds. The ferocity of 
much of the discussion is what most impresses one. As 
Jerome wrote, for example, of an ambiguous saying of 
Origen's that could be taken to imply an inequality between 
Father and Son, *Tf I had heard my father or mother saying 
those things against Christ, I would have torn their blasphem- 
ing mouths like those of a mad dog." For him, it was only 
necessary that a writer should diverge ever so slightly from 
what he deemed the orthodox philosophy to be thereafter 
a "scorpion" or a "slimy serpent." 

If this was true of the great leaders, it can be imagined 
what were the excesses of the fanatical and ignorant monks. 
It was not necessary that the subject of the quarrels should 
concern the central truths of the faith. One heresy, that 
of the Donatists, that lasted a hundred years and embittered 
and repeatedly endangered the life of Augustine, had to do 
only with a matter of church order ; and yet the violence 
was such that one party, the Circumcelliones, not content 
with wholesale bloodshed, used to destroy the eyesight of 
its antagonists by rubbing out their eyes with chalk and 
vinegar. 

It is not strange that superstitions drifted in to fill the 
place of the homely simplicity of Jesus' message. The wor- 
ship of angels, saints, and martyrs, became universal; bones 
and ashes and relics were held of priceless value to draw' 
worshipers to shrines and chapels ; and the ascetic life of 
the celibate came to be the refuge of those who sought to 
escape the evil of the world around them, until one is fairly 
bewildered by the forgetfulness of the real Jesus and his 
teachings shown by those who were his accredited repre- 
sentatives and who yet parted from his leadership at every 
turn. 

35 



[III-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

With all our failings of today, we have yet come a vast 
distance since that time. How unthinkable in those days 
of self-will and passion would have been such an ecumenical 
church council as was held a few years ago at Edinburgh 
to consider foreign missions, where men like John R. Mott, 
Robert E. Speer, Lord Balfour of Burleigh, and Professor 
Cairns were the leaders, and where the spirit of mutual 
regard, the spirit of Christian love, was in control. But the 
advance, so far as there has been advance, has been in the 
demand for reality in Christian character, for actual fidelity 
to those teachings of Jesus that even a plain man may under- 
stand without subtle formulation by learned theologians. 

Unquestionably there was, more or less out of sight through 
all these years, the "remnant" of true disciples, as in Central 
Europe today, who walked humbly in faith and love, and 
who kept alive the continuity of the true brotherhood. But 
the spectacle of the visible Church is too largely that of a 
grim travesty on the real teaching and example of Jesus 
Christ, calling as that does for brotherly kindness and un- 
selfishness first of all. 

The colossal work of the great Christian organizations 
in camp and field and prison has been an object lesson in 
the religion of Jesus — in divine love ministering to the 
needs of men. It has brought Jesus Christ more intelli- 
gibly near to humanity and has visibly interpreted his 
Gospel. When one contrasts this war of the Allies with 
the so-called holy v/ars of the Crusades, that moved on 
amid an ever-present and all-encompassing environment of 
debauchery and cruelty and dishonor, we recognize with 
humble gratitude that the Spirit of God has led his Church 
very far since that time, in understanding what Jesus wanted 
of men and what it is to believe in him. The oft-repeated 
declaration, 'T will have mercy and not sacrifice" has sunk 
deep into the hearts of his followers since those days of 
callous inhumanity. And for this we may well thank God 
and take courage. 

II 

It is a strange thing that out of a religion so elaborately 
sacerdotal and legalistic as Judaism, should have come a 
teaching so homely and unconventional as this insistence of 

36 



FACING TOWARD MAN [III-c] 

Jesus on the supreme duty of good will to men. Anybody 
can be kind, whereas the world has always recognized that 
it requires severe training and great natural gifts to be 
an adept in religion. If we take the second commandment 
and the Golden Rule, and put beside them Jesus' picture of 
the Last Judgment, we have an unanswerable presentation 
of the supreme demand made by Christianity for sympathetic 
kindness in all human relations. It is obvious at a glance 
that Jesus would make it the most distinctive trait in the 
character of his disciples, and that, just in proportion as one 
is a follower of Jesus, he is bound to be a man of deep 
human sympathies. It is not enough to be a man of clean 
life, honorable reputation, and reverent spirit — or even of 
correct views. There have been many such who in social 
relations were cold as ice, and who simply were not inter- 
ested in common people. If one is to hear the words of 
Jesus and do them, there must needs be a spring of love 
in his heart that will make him a friend of men and a 
helper of those in trouble. 

Nothing could display this teaching more emphatically 
than the Parable of the Last Judgment. The basis of its 
awards is one of astonishing simplicity — nothing more nor 
less than men's treatment of their fellows. Jesus evidently 
saw in this the deep element of kinship of spirit with God, 
by faith and love. But outwardly it looked merely like com- 
mon kindness. The decisive consideration was the way they 
had carried themselves to very humble and even socially 
objectionable people — men in poor clothes, women in trouble, 
people under a cloud, at whom ordinary folk simply stare 
coldly. Good Jews would have felt it reasonable, at such 
a time of stern inquiry as the judgment, to examine closely 
into one's habits — whether one was a lover of the law ; 
whether he was scrupulous about the Sabbath ; whether he 
was a regular attendant at the synagogue, made his temple 
offerings frequently, and was obedient to the priest ; or, as 
a loyal Jew, was an orthodox adherent of Jehovah and a 
hater of all Gentile ways. But to discard the whole field of 
such religious duties for an inquiry into one's relations with 
beggars and prisoners and the common rabble, this was a 
mere trap for the righteous, whose religious duties left them 
little time or patience for wasting on the masses. 

' Z7 



[III-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

It must have been bad enough in their thought that he 
who called himself the great rabbi, the preacher of the 
people, was himself a sort of vagrant philanthropist, with 
no school like Hillel or Gamaliel, with no dignified seclusion 
or reserve, and without an edifying show of piety or learn- 
ing; merely one who went about doing good, with sick, and 
cripples, and women and children, and tax-collectors, and 
a crowd of the unwashed, ever following him about and 
making demands upon his time. A man who was teacher 
and saint and prophet should have had more self-respect 
than to be at the beck and call of the rabble, healing their 
sick and casting out demons like a common hireling doctor 
or exorcist. All this was humiliating enough. But to set 
up these undignified habits as a test of piety for faithful 
Jews, for the guides and leaders of the people — this was 
deplorable. Even to the disciples, this picture drawn by 
Jesus must have seemed to confuse religious values in a 
hopeless tangle of perplexities. 

But to us today the simplicity and winsomeness of his 
thought grows ever more clear and more convincing. We 
seem to see quite clearly what Jesus meant by that last test 
of worthiness — not "dead works," nor dead faith, nor any 
other dead or useless thing whatever ; but a living participa- 
tion in his own spirit, so much of a share in his life-spirit 
as to have a share in his life-work. His life-work was loving 
helpfulness, bringing an infinite compassion to bear on human 
sin and need and sorrow. And those who were with him in 
this life-purpose, ministers to their brothers' need — for all 
their imperfections, these were the sheep who stood on his 
right hand. This is the perfect fruit of the religion of Jesus. 

Ill 

It is the fruit of a deeply rooted life. At this point the 
close interrelation of the first and second commandments 
of Jesus should claim our attention for a moment more. 
One of our present-day poets has very cleverly said, with a 
certain inviting speciousness, "If every man loved his neigh- 
bor as himself, this world would be a paradise; and for me 
this purpose is all the creed and all the religion that I want." 
It needs only a moment of reflection to perceive the thought- 
lessness of such an utterance. In any large city of Christen- 

38 



FACING TOWARD MAN [III-c] 

dom you could gather quickly a thousand men and women 
who, if they were to love and treat one as they love and 
treat themselves, would treat him with such injurious folly 
as would presently draw him body and soul to destruction. 
Why? Because so many men are themselves the prey of 
dark forces ; they are the sport of evil tastes and habits ; 
they are mastered by avarice or passion ; their will is warped 
clear away from righteousness, and in their highest faculties 
they are like men crippled or blinded. 

This is the problem that Jesus faced — how to bring back 
to God a society full of men and women in such radical 
distress and need as this. The philosophy that would make 
life a paradise by persuading all to love their neighbor as 
themselves, and going no further in relief of life's thousand 
ills, is a philosophy for those blind and deaf to all the long 
tragedy of human travail. To say nothing of our need, at 
times, of infinitely more than any neighbor can do for us,- 
both love of self and love of man have first to be made 
wise and right, or they will still make earth a place of misery. 

The command to love God comes first by an obvious 
necessity. It calls a man first to know himself and honor 
himself and learn to love himself, in purity and self-mastery 
and righteousness, as one whom God loves, and so, living 
as a son of God, to love his neighbor as himself. Such a 
love for one's neighbor, informed and enriched by the good 
will of our Father, would indeed go far to make this world 
a comfortable home. But here is a task that, the more one 
reflects upon it, opens up vistas of far-reaching need that 
quite outrun the powers of the best of human character to 
overtake. Would it were true that "just the art of being 
kind is all this poor world needs" ! But most of us get out 
into the stream of life only a little way before we discover 
that we are pitifully unequal to cope with the situation by 
anything our utmost good will can do, and that some force 
is needed more deeply redemptive and reconstructive than 
even the law of the Golden Rule. Jesus thought so. His 
life and death made luminous to men what force he thought 
this was — even the living energy of God's love. And he calls 
men to commend it, by their witness of victorious living, to 
all God's sons and daughters. 



39 



CHAPTER IV 

The Demand for Genuineness 

DAILY READINGS 

Fourth Week, First Day 

Search me, O God, and know my heart: 

Try me, and know my thoughts; 

And see if there be any wicked way in me, 

And lead me in the way everlasting. — Psalm 139:23, 24. 

Sanctimonious cant and pious humbug have always been 
associated with religion. But they cannot be associated with, 
the real discipleship of Jesus, because his presence dissipates 
them as a strong north wind scatters the fog. If he were 
with us we should feel instantly the force of his whole 
personality, challenging candor and honesty on our part in 
answer to his own straightforward manhood. 

One of the first elements of character on which he insists 
is genuineness, A true man must be of a limpid sincerity, 
toward God as well as toward his fellows. He must be 
honest before all — the inward and the outward agreeing. 
Unreality in religion is odious alike to God and man. 

Take heed that ye do not your righteousness before 
men, to be seen of them: else ye have no reward with 
your Father who is in heaven. 

When therefore thou doest alms, sound not a trumpet 
before thee, as the hypocrites do in the synagogues and 
in the streets, that they may have glory of men. Verily 
I say unto you. They have received their reward. But 
when thou doest alms, let not thy left hand know what 
thy right hand doeth: that thine alms may be in secret: 
and thy Father who seeth in secret shall recompense 
thee.— Matt. 6: 1-4. 

40 



THE DEMAXD FOR GENUINENESS [IV-2] 

If it were one of us who was speaking on the subject of 
genuineness in religion, we would nqt begin with the matter 
of giving money. Perhaps some of us would not have much 
to talk about if character were to be appraised from that 
angle. But the Jews had a somewhat wooden division of 
righteousness into three parts — almsgiving, prayer, and fast- 
ing. He who attended to these three great duties was the 
conventionally righteous man. Jesus followed this classifica- 
tion. It would let in the light upon his theme as well as any 
other. 

The arresting thought for us in this passage is that Jesus 
so evidently regards the prosaic matter of the way in which 
we spend a few dollars as a sacred engagement between 
ourselves and God. He is concerned in it. It depends not 
so much on what the public asks of us, or on what the 
Church expects, but on the reality of our filial relation with 
our Father. If we are like him in spirit, or want to be 
like him, we simply cannot help sharing some of our good 
things with those less fortunate than we. It is a spontaneous 
expression of love, both for him and his. He sees and notes 
it, as he notes every such offering of grateful love. We are 
gladdened by his response, in which there cannot fail to be 
a blessing. This is the reward of which Jesus speaks. But 
if we use our benevolence, as the Pharisees did, to gain 
the applause of men, then we stand exposed as playing to 
the gallery. We are play-actors, that is, hypocrites — appear- 
ing to serve God, but really seeking to serve ourselves. We 
are caught in the net of unreality ; we are building on sand. 

Fourth Week, Second Day 

And when ye pray, ye shall not be as the hypocrites: 
for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and 
in the corners of the streets, that they may be seen of 
men. Verily I say unto you, They have received their 
reward. But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine 
inner chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy 
Father who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in 
secret shall recompense thee. And in praying use not 
vain repetitions, as the Gentiles do: for they think that 
they shall be heard for their much speaking. Be not 
therefore like unto them: for your Father knoweth what 
things ye have need of, before ye ask him. — Matt. 6 : 5-8. 

41 



[IV-3] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Later on we shall be considering Jesus' views as to the 
place of prayer in the building of character. At this time 
we only need to note the plain reasonableness of his demand 
for an intense simplicity and reality about it. If it means 
anything at all, it means the transcendent converse of our 
spirits with the Spirit of God. A thousand forces are hurry- 
ing us along the stream of purely material interests in our 
crowded daily life — suddenly, we stand still in the midflow 
of these physical preoccupations and reach out into the un- 
seen eternity for God. He may be closer at hand than the 
sights and sounds that fill our eyes and ears, but he is in a 
great silence, in another thought-world than that of this 
rush of human striving in which we live. 

It is wonderful and beautiful beyond words, that we should 
be able in an instant's turning of the mind to talk thus with 
our Father who inhabits eternity. But, Jesus says, to do this 
we must concentrate attention — we must withdraw ourselves 
from the confusion of the crowd and the clamor of sense- 
appeals, and give ourselves intently to the sacred business 
of the moment. To use prayer as a show, or as a means of 
acquiring merit, or a mere form of outward worship, or as 
anything hut what it is — the simple, sublime converse of a 
child with his Father — is to part company with reality and 
play zvith an illusion. 

Fourth Week, Third Day , 

Judge not, that ye be not judged. For with what judg- 
ment ye judge, ye shall be judged: and with what measure 
ye mete, it shall be measured unto you. And why be- 
holdest thou the mote that is in thy brother's eye, but 
considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye? Or 
how wilt thou say to thy brother. Let me cast out the 
mote out of thine eye; and lo, the beam is in thine own 
eye? Thou hypocrite, cast out first the beam out of thine 
own eye; and then shait thou see clearly to cast out the 
mote out of thy brother's eye. — Matt. 7:1-5. 

This is another type of unsoundness of character, against 
which Jesus is severe. Some of us might hardly agree with 
him, at first thought, because the world counts it distinctly 
clever to have a sharp critical faculty, keen at dissecting 
other people's foibles and follies. It not only gives a piquancy 

42 



THE DEMAND FOR GENUIXEXESS [IV-4] 

to one's own conversation, but carries the agreeable sugges- 
tion that the critic himself is wiser or better than those he 
exposes. But to Jesus, this quality of character, complacent 
and excusing toward itself but ungenerously severe toward 
others, is contemptible because blundering and self-deceived. 
We do well to shun carefully a habit that, in the eyes of 
t.he Master, was a peril to noble living. 

In the famous dedication to the Life of Charles Kingsley, 
he is spoken of as "Stern to all forms of wrong and oppres- 
sion, yet most stern to himself." Obviously no man can be 
true to the interests of society or church or state and not 
at times speak out what he believes to be the truth as to the 
wrongdoings or deficiencies of others. A Christian man who 
abdicates all exercise of the critical faculty is a poor fighter 
for any worthy cause and a grievous irritation to his friends. 
But if he is a disciple of Jesus he will be genuinely honest, 
in that he judges himself first and most severely, and judges 
others only reluctantly and with generosity, as he would 
himself be judged. 

Fourth Week, Fourth Day 

Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time. 
Thou shalt not kill; and whosoever shall kill shall be in 
danger of the judgment: but I say unto you, that every 
one who is angry with his brother shall be in danger of 
the judgment; and whosoever shall say to his brother, 
Raca, shall be in danger of the council; and whosoever 
shall say, Thou fool, shall be in danger of the hell of fire. 
— Matt. 5: 21, 22. 

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, 
a^id railing, be put away from you, with all malice: and 
be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each 
other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. — Eph. 
4:31, 32. 

Here is a sidelight upon Jesus' idea of what the brotherly 
spirit really demands of men. It is not enough to make 
professions of sympathy or good will, or to refrain from 
actual violence towards the one who offends us. Jesus makes 
it plain that he who searches the heart will be content with 
nothing less than a persevering, brotherly good will toward 
our neighbor, even under provocation. How could it be 

43 



[IV-51 BUILDING ON ROCK 

otherwise, if we are all God's children? He forbids not 
only open violence, but the bitterness and rancor of spirit 
that flames out in contemptuous or savage language. To 
have one's heart defiled with hatred, made bitter and evil 
by harbored ill will, carries with it an inevitable and painful 
retribution. It shuts one out from God. The sight of a 
follower of Jesus trying to find words bitter and cruel 
enough to express his hate, is something monstrous in its 
incongruity. It is a perilous thing to throw the reins on 
the neck of one's passion, even against an unscrupulous 
enemy, and to search for every venomous and stinging word 
that we can bring against him. However it may affect him, 
it injures us. It reacts against the very element in character 
that is most divine — the spirit of our Lord's gentleness and 
compassion, that refuses to be blasted, even by human 
wickedness. 

Fourth Week, Fifth Day 

Again, ye have heard that it was said to them of old 
time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt perform 
unto the Lord thine oaths: but I say unto you. Swear 
not at all; neither by the heaven, for it is the throne of 
God; nor by the earth, for it is the footstool of his feet; 
nor by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King. 
Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, for thou canst 
not make one hair white or black. But let your speech 
be, Yea, yea; Nay, nay: and whatsoever is more than 
these is of the evil one. — Matt. 5:33-37. 

It is a curious thing that the ideal of a perfectly truthful 
life should have been given us by an Oriental. The difficulties 
of administering justice in the cour!s anywhere in the Far 
East, even until today, are an amazement to the Anglo-Saxon, 
because his moral inheritance does not enable him to imagine 
what complete indifference to the truth may mean. But 
Jesus grew up amid the endless deceits and trickeries of 
Asiatic village life. And from him came our vision of 
knightly honor — of the word of a gentleman, true as steel. 

The Church has known endless tergiversation and dis- 
ingenuousness, until men have sometimes looked with sus- 
picion on an ecclesiastic just because of his religious training. 
But the man who builds his character after the Master's 

44 



THE DEMAND FOR GENUINENESS [IV-6] 

pattern has always been a man of high honor, churchman or 
not. How could he be anything else, while daily inviting that 
divine scrutiny? Many of us love to remember the excla- 
mation of Livingstone's, written in peril of death that night 
on the bank of the River Loangwa, when he steeled himself 
to courage by a promise of Jesus, "It is the word of a 
gentleman of the most sacred and strictest honor, and there 
is an end on't." Jesus would have his disciples like himself, 
sensitive to truth, hating a lie ; not needing to bolster up with 
oaths their affirmations, as the custom was and is, but so 
transparently genuine that God and man alike would know 
they meant what they said. 

Fourth Week, Sixth Day 

Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost 
its savor, wherewith shall it be salted? it is thenceforth 
good for nothing, but to be cast out and trodden under 
foot of men. Ye are the light of the world. A city set 
on a hill cannot be hid. Neither do men light a lamp, 
and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; and it 
shineth unto all that are in the house. Even so let your 
light shine before men; that they may see your good 
works, and glorify your Father who is in heaven. — Matt. 
5:13-16. 

All of us like praise. At the same time we do not like 
so much praise as to put us in the uncomfortable position 
of being too highly estimated and so having too much ex- 
pected of us. Perhaps a Pharisee would have taken these 
words of Jesus with serene relish. But we are not Pharisees. 
We are rather inclined to deprecate such strong language 
as applied to ourselves. On the whole we would a great 
deal prefer not to be called the salt of the earth or the light 
of the world. We would rather move in a modest twilight 
of amateur effort, that cannot commit us to anything very 
formidable in the way of expectations. 

But Jesus' idea of Christian character leaves no room 
for such enervating modesty. He gives it the full spur and 
tonic of a divine order of merit. He was under no illusion 
as to the moral perfection of those rough, undisciplined men 
to whom he spoke. Well he knew that they were no saints. 
But he knew the direction of their life-choice, he understood 

45 



lIV-7] BUILDING ON ROCK 

the brave venture of their faith, and as one who knew human 
societ)^ and all its needs he said unhesitatingly, "Ye are the 
salt of the earth." If they were genuine, they must needs 
be that. If they were honestly his disciples, they would prove 
to be the light of the world. 

He disapproves our nebulous land of half-lights and com- 
promise, where we can walk by easy-going standards. If we 
are honest we must stand out in the open, men of confessed 
faith and obedience toward God ; and then some, at least, 
will be grateful to God that we have lived. 

No service ii'e can render society will be more gratefully 
received than this, that we should make it a little easier 
for men to believe in God. 

Fourth Week, Seventh Day 

And there are gathered together unto him the Fhari- 
sees, and certain of the scribes, who had come from 
Jerusalem, and had seen that some of his disciples ate 
their bread with defiled, that is, unwashen, hands. . . . 
And the Pharisees and the scribes ask him, Why walk 
not thy disciples according to the tradition of the elders, 
but eat their bread with defiled hands? And he said 
unto them. Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, 
as it is written, 

This people honoreth me with their lips, 

But their heart is far from me. 

. . . And he called to him the multitude again, and 
said unto them, Hear me all of you, and understand: 
there is nothing from without the man, that going into 
him can defile him; but the things which proceed out of 
the man are those that defile the man. — Mark 7:1, 2, 
5, 6, 14, 15. 

To the average man in the street today these words would 
seem ordinary common sense, so obvious is their truth. But 
they were dangerous words in the thought of the best men 
of Jesus' time, and marked him as a revolutionary as surely 
as if he had been a soap-box orator declaiming against society. 
All the nice discriminations of manner and custom that 
marked ofiF religious people from the non-religious, slowly 
built up through the centuries, he seemed to set at nought. 
If love was the fulfilling of the law, if only the inner state 

46 



THE DEMAND FOR GENUINENESS [IV-c] 

of the heart was what God considered, what was the use of 
the thousand and one enactments and prohibitions of law 
and tradition, that hedged off the pious few from the 
ignorant, unclean masses of the people and the Gentiles? 
One only needed to ask the question to show how ridiculous 
the contention of Jesus was, so they thought. 

And yet today Jesus' way of judging moral values has 
become a commonplace. That is, it is coming to be a com- 
monplace ; for the old dependence on pious externalities, with 
no touch of love and service about them, has a strong grip 
on many of us yet. If we, coming from Christian homes, 
live orderly decent lives, fairly correct and even religious, 
by sheer force of training and habit, we are likely to think 
it makes us all right with God. Outwardly, we put up a 
pretty good front; no one could find much fault with our 
lives. But God looketh upon the heart ! What are its tastes 
and thoughts and desires? Is it love that lies deepest, keep- 
ing us humble and grateful and eager to help, or is it self- 
love and self-will? 

To follozv Jesus is to have this demand for genuine loyalty 
to his spirit pressed home with fresh insistence every day, 
until little by little it begins to tell. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

Surely there was never a religious teacher who laid such 
stress on reality as Jesus. He was no dreamy-eyed mystic, 
gazing ecstatically on a far-off heavenly world of saints and 
angels. He was building a new kingdom out of the stuff that 
lay just ready to his hand — men and women with all the 
faults and limitations of society at that Syrian level. They 
delighted in religion, like all Semitic peoples. But they had 
little use for stern self-restraint for altruistic ends. They 
much preferred the old-time sacrifices of the temple worship. 

How well Jesus understood them — he who had grown up 
as one of them ! But he refused to draw any dividing line 
between religion and the everyday moralities of the home 
and market. To do the will of God was his religion, and 
it was his ideal of character, as well. Both have to do with 

47 



LIV-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

the unseen God who searcheth the hearts, yet both work out 
openly in the commonplace social relations of daily living ; 
so that all pretense or make-believe or pious camouflage of 
any description are wholly useless, and actively hurtful be- 
cause they blind the eye of the soul. Unless a man is 
genuinely in earnest, he will make a sorry figure as a pro- 
fessed follower of such a Teacher. 

This being so, one would suppose that the Church of Jesus' 
disciples would have been, through all the years, scrupulously 
earnest in its insistence on a genuine heart-loyalty to his 
ideals. It is a shocking thing to realize that through a large 
part of so-called Christendom until today, just the opposite 
is true. Unreality and formal make-believe and callous in- 
difference to social obligations are rampant, just as they 
were among the men who listened so angrily to Jesus when 
he spoke the words. 

One might almost be inclined to think, at first, that the 
readings for this week, illustrating Jesus' demand for genuine- 
ness, were hardly necessary for our generation. They are 
like truisms. One might take them for granted, so deeply 
have they entered into the moral perception of our time. 
But they are anything but truisms. One cannot consider 
them too deeply, or take home their lesson too earnestly 
and humbly. It is just because learned men have outwardly 
approved but inwardly rejected them that our world has been 
passing through an agony of distress and bloodshed, now in 
our time. 

It would be well if everyone could read a book like 
Franck's "Vagabonding through the Andes." It is a singu- 
larly entertaining record of travel, but its value for our 
purpose lies in its endless series of vivid word pictures, 
accurate as a photograph, of the unconscious but appalling 
chasm between religion and reality among the masses in 
those Andean countries. Fanatically attached to Christianity 
as they know it, living always within sound of clangorous 
church-bells, they yet see no incongruity either for priest 
or people between that profession and the actual practice 
of lying, drunkenness, immorality, and kindred vices. They 
live and move and have their being in the midst of a great 
illusion, namely, that they are Christian. 

Nor can we utterly disclaim the presence, even among our 
48 



THE DEMAXD FOR GENUINENESS LIV-c] 

strictest reformed churches, of- a similar lack of reality in 
estimating moral values, especially in relation to our Master's 
demand for love. Even in clear-thinking Scotland, not so 
many years ago. a man might be a harsh father and an 
avaricious neighbor without injury to his church standing, 
when a breach of Sabbath decorum or an openly expressed 
doubt as to a doctrine in the Confession would have sub- 
jected him to immediate censure and suspicion. And our 
own immediate circle, to say nothing of our own lives, will 
furnish instances enough of the same tendency to set up 
other and less exacting standards than those of Jesus, to 
which we profess allegiance. One may put up a most satis- 
fying pretense, while yet cold-hearted and self-willed. But 
Jesus demands of men such a life as only a loving heart, 
however it is to be come by, can make possible. Clever 
dialectic and all subterfuge he brushes to one side. 

II 

Our twentieth century thought, like that of the first cen- 
tury, is disposed to regard men as the spectators and society 
as the final judge of moral conduct. If humanity applauds, 
well and good — we may rest content. Just so far as our 
estimates are dependent on the glory of men, they are out 
of touch with the teaching of Jesus., He was not in the 
least abashed to assert that every man lives in so close a 
relation with his Heavenly Father that day by day he is 
under God's most real and solicitous observation. And 
anyone who forgets this, or lives as in the sight of men 
only, is likely to be betrayed into grievous defects of 
character. 

We all understand today that life is measured by the 
correspondence of inner to outer relations. If one's moral 
life is adjusted only to our human world, without reference 
to that vital spiritual environment of God's presence, it goes 
crippled of its true resources. Maladjustment means limita- 
tion, poverty of life, 

Jesus expressed this in the familiar words, "Take heed 
that ye do not your righteousness before men, to be seen of 
them : else ye have no reward with your Father who is in 
heaven." The mistake men were making in Jesus' day was 
in seeking the praise of men more than the praise of God. 

49 



[IV-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

We do that still. But many of those to whom he spoke did 
it in a very foolish way, that we have largely outgrown. We 
have outgrown it just because this teaching of Jesus has sunk 
so deep in popular understanding as to have become a part 
of our moral inheritance. The shame of hypocrisy, and the 
ridiculousness of it, seem to us perfectly obvious — not so 
to Jesus' audience that day, or to any audience outside of 
Christendom even now. Those men saw nothing humorous 
in a man's stopping suddenly on a street corner, where he 
was much in the way, throwing his praying shawl over his 
shoulders, and engaging earnestly in prayer. To us it would 
be ludicrous and rather disgusting for a man so to parade 
the sacred and secret devotion of his soul. But to them it 
was a highly edifying and agreeable spectacle. 

So it is today all over Asia and Africa where Muhammad 
holds sway — he who kneels in the broad sunlight of a public 
square and prays toward Mecca is a devout child of the 
prophet, and much to be commended. We simply cannot 
conceive the mental state of a full-grown man who carries 
a prayer-wheel with him about his work, as the Tibetans do, 
and twirls it industriously at odd moments, that he may 
obtain credit both of heaven and of his neighbors as a pious 
man. The Chinese are no fools. But among them a shing- 
shan-ti, or doer of virtue, is a perfectly familiar and highly 
esteemed character. Yet his virtue is largely of the sort 
that, for instance, buys and sets free captive birds in large 
numbers, said birds having been snared and caged — as every- 
one knows — for this express purpose. 

All this indicates how deeply this teaching of Jesus has 
affected Christendom. His scathing satire has largely done 
its work. We understand what he meant. We see that if we 
do our righteousness before men to be seen of them, we are 
somehow like men building on the sand — we are putting 
jerry workmanship into our characters. The trouble is that 
while we can see the unreality so plainly in the forms in 
which Jesus pointed it out — the naively childlike ways of 
bland hypocrisy — we are not quick to detect it in other 
forms in ourselves, as when we, who claim to be ardent 
seekers after truth, find ways of dodging inconvenient truths 
that profoundly invigorate the soul, yet are not susceptible 
of scientific demonstration. 

50 



THE DEMAND FOR GENUINENESS [IV-c] 



III 

Plain character-building is sometimes likely to be cold, 
barren work. Jesus would not have it so. Trudging, like 
Weir of Hermiston, "up the great bare staircase of duty" is 
not life as he thought of it. And we shall do well to linger 
a moment on that recurring phrase of his, "thy Father who 
seeth in secret shall recompense thee." Perhaps none of us, 
in our day, would have dared to say this quite so frankly ; 
nor would we have referred, without apology, to the "reward 
with our Father in heaven." We seem to have reached a 
plane of delicate sentiment too refined to speak much about 
rewards. Following that medieval saint with her torch and 
bucket — the one to burn up heaven, the other to extinguish 
hell — we have maintained that men should be righteous with- 
out any regard to rewards and punishments, through plain 
love of virtue. 

It must be admitted that the theory is a trifle chilly, and 
not quite suited to the needs of ordinary men, who are 
wonderfully moved by considerations of personal welfare. 
Jesus deals with this half-sentimental affectation after his 
own fashion. He does not even apologize to it, he ignores 
it altogether. He knew that in a true and abounding sense 
virtue is its own reward. But he was keenly conscious of 
the fact that, under the moral economy of his Father's house- 
hold, virtue was bound up inseparably with ever fresh privi- 
lege and reward. Every thoughtful man knows it to be so, 
but never a man realized this so keenly as did Jesus. He. 
alone knew the full graciousness of his Father's love ; he 
alone knew what reviving and refreshing joy came from 
Him to light up with gladness the dull way of duty. 

He was not afraid of being misunderstood or of appealing 
to mercenary motives in speaking of the fact in a very homely 
way, almost as to children, speaking plainly of the reward 
that the Father's love brought to those who were faithfully 
obedient to him. Possibly he would not have spoken quite 
so simply to our more sophisticated minds, but, as a matter 
of fact, here is what he said, and it is pleasant and comfort- 
ing to think of. There is nothing chilly about it. It is the 
language of the Elder Brother in the household regarding 
the Father's treatment of the children — that the Father, 

51 



[IV-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

though quite unobserved by us, is observant of his house- 
hold, and recompenses with the surprises of his kindness 
those who live in patient loyalty to him. He has them in 
mind, he gladdens them by showing that he has not forgotten. 
And so it was poor business for God's children to be fish- 
ing for compliments from men, angling for their applause, 
when the good God was quick to see and keen to appreciate 
every service done genuinely unto him. It was a very homely 
way to speak, and some in our day may feel that it is a 
little below their level. But he who will receive it, let him 
receive it ! He will take endless comfort in its warmth and 
graciousness ; and if he is a bit tired and disheartened in the 
long fight for character, and it seems a little barren and 
colorless, with no one noticing his up-hill efforts, let him 
remember that Jesus Said repeatedly that the Father seeth 
in secret and Himself will recompense us. Jesus evidently 
believed it, in as matter-of-fact a way as he believed in the 
scowling presence of the Pharisees. We shall be fortunate 
if we can believe it, too, and person with person — God 
somewhere in secret and we here in the sunlight — live sin- 
cerely unto him. , 

I'V , 

Jesus' idea of reality in the Christian left no place for 
a dull, dispirited compliance with unavoidable duty. That 
was out of the question for one who trusted as he did in 
his Father's good will. But he also left no room for any of 
his followers to shufifle along after him in the cheerful com- 
fort of half-secrecy, dodging unfriendly observation and 
escaping inconvenient publicity. He asked for an outright, 
conspicuous loyalty, answering to the inward spirit of genuine 
allegiance. He had no use for the tentative experimental 
attitude of one who was not quite sure whether or how far 
discipleship was practicable, but was willing to venture a 
small investment that he could afford to lose. Honesty to 
him meant outrightness ; and outrightness radiates help for 
others. 

So he said confidently to those half-taught, immature 
disciples, "Ye are the salt of the earth, ye are the light 
of the world." It rather takes one's breath away to be 
thrust into the lime-light like this. The friendly shadows 

52 



THE DEMAND FOR GENUINENESS [IV-c] 

would be a good deal more to our liking. We know enough 
of our own imperfections to feel persuaded that this is get- 
ting on too fast. We are not worthy of such honor. Some- 
body else must be slated for these influential positions of 
trust — we are not the timber for preferment such as that. 

But Jesus' meaning was unmistakable. He knew what he 
was doing and held to his policy consistently to the end. If 
any man were genuinely following after him he would be a 
savior of society. If anyone truly walked in the light of 
his counsel, he would be a light for others. They would 
see him, and by his witness and example would find the way. 
There have been innumerable so-called Christians of whom 
this was not true, who were worse than useless for the 
healing or leadership of society. There will be innumerable 
more. But it is not for one of us to be among them, if we 
would be the sterling article. Jesus merely states a matter 
of fact when he says that the hope of the world rests on 
these men and women who have caught his spirit. He counts 
on them to finish what he began ; he counts on them to 
sweeten and save the world. If we, too, are living in an 
illusion as insincere disciples, we also may help to plunge 
the world in misery. But if we are true to his leadership, 
we shall inevitably be a preserving power and an illumination 
for those in the dark. 

There is simply no denying the truth of this principle. 
It is to be seen written in staring capitals in many parts 
of the world today — for instance, in the South Seas. Anyone 
who has read Jack London's or Mrs. London's diary of "The 
Voyage of the Snark" must have felt the aching tragedy 
of the destruction of the native islanders by disease. Wher- 
ever the white man has gone much among them, as in the 
Marquesas group, they have almost quite rotted away with 
tuberculosis and asthma and diseases of the skin and blood, 
until scarcely any able-bodied men remain. Modern civiliza- 
tion has meant to them quick corruption and decay. Jack 
London has no special fondness for the missionary, but he, 
like Robert Louis Stevenson, could not fail to notice that 
where the disciples of Jesus have gone they have been a 
preserving salt for those ready to perish. They have fought 
for them to the death against drunkenness and savagery and 
licentiousness, and in many regions have kept their people 

53 



[IV-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

from the abyss. It is not so picturesque, but it means life 
instead of death. 

In every city of England and America one finds the same 
two forces side by side. And in ten thousand ways that are 
not so conspicuously evident, the men and women who 
genuinely seek to do the great Master's will are holding- 
civilization together, in these days when ruthlessness has been 
threatening to blast it into ruin. Love is the conserving 
power — as a matter of the most commonplace observation, 
as of a laboratory experiment a thousand times repeated. 
Love redeems ! And all honest approach to Jesus brings 
one into touch with love. Only the make-believe Chris- 
tianity, the formal variety, leaves out the essential love and 
contents itself with cheaper substitutes of forms and pro- 
fessions and ideals that do not operate. But the real rock- 
built character is always and everywhere concerned with the 
help of men. • 



Jesus insisted not only that genuine religion meant love, 
but that it meant truth. It could not be otherwise in his 
view, because men lived not only under the observation of 
society but under the eye of God. There was no use in 
fraud or evasion or hypocrisy of any sort, because all things 
were naked and open before him with whom we have to do. 
And as men were with God, so they should be with one 
another — not only truthful, not only honest, but "splendidly 
candid" in their sincerity. 

The Church has often been at a dismal remove from its 
Master in ^his respect, as in others. And yet it must be 
plain to all, that, as Orientals have so often borne witness, 
love of truth is a Christian virtue. If our forefathers hated 
a lie, it was because they had drunk deep of the spirit of Him 
who was truth incarnate, and from all sham or equivocation 
or disingenuous compromise they turned away with fear and 
loathing. They did not care to be deceived, however pleasant 
the deceit ; they would rather keep their faces straight set 
toward reality, however grim the prospect. No doubt they 
made mistakes abundantly, but they would not consciously 
palter with the truth. They could not, and keep undisturbed 

54 



THE DEMAND FOR GENUINENESS [IV-c] 

at the same time their fellowship with the God of Jesus 
Christ. 

It is worth noting this fact seriously, because of its bear- 
ing on faith in Jesus' message. He has been for humanity, 
without question, a very fountain-head of truth. Wherever 
his influence goes today it challenges falsehood and smites 
at fraud and imposition. To him, as to the Old Testament 
Jehovah, an unjust weight and all it stood for were an abomi- 
nation. 

And yet a popular type of criticism today affirms that he 
is the center of the world's greatest illusion ; that he has 
entangled humanity for two thousand years in a network of 
untruth and unreality; that he was himself half deluded and 
half deluding, and bequeathed to men — along with much 
good — a heritage of mocking shadows, with his empty talk 
of a Heavenly Father and a future life. One shrinks a little 
from admitting it, but it is evident enough that if this popular 
skepticism is right, Jesus was the active center of an aggre- 
gation of untruths so colossal that the imagination can hardly 
grasp its monstrousness. The ills that so vast a system of 
deceit must have brought on humanity are past computation, 
as we think of the scores of generations cradled in a lie. 
It is Jesus himself who has thrust upon the world a whole 
series of false weights and measures in the precious values 
of the soul. 

As over against this contention of so many learned scholars 
in our day, we have to set the indisputable fact that Jesus 
has been the world's inspiration to a splendid candor in 
the search for truth. If Livingstone in the African forest 
felt him to be true as a sword-blade, the confidence made 
Livingstone himself of a knightly honor in keeping faith 
with his black carriers who followed him to the western 
ocean. One simply cannot build character on Jesus' lines 
and tolerate any cheap advantages of deceit, whether self- 
deceit or the deceit of others. And since a fountain cannot 
send forth both sweet water and bitter, we who have felt 
Jesus' leadership, and heard his ringing challenge to fearless 
righteousness, must count him also true and dependable 
altogether. 



55 



CHAPTER V 

Be Ye Merciful 

DAILY READINGS 



1 



Never was the world so hungry for mercy as today. With 
fascinated gaze it has been watching year after year the work- 
ing out of the opposite of mercy, the ruthless will to power. 
And it has come to the point where men are forced to see 
that along the line of the most scientific organization for 
efficiency, apart from the divine quality of kindness of heart, 
there is no hope for society. We should not have been 
agreed on this point a few years ago, Jesus' program for 
the enlargement of human life through kindness seemed 
then a trifle naive in its childlike impracticability. But today 
we have looked into the abyss of a merciless self-will and 
have sickened with the fear that it might be deep enough 
to engulf all Christendom in chaos. And the far-off call out 
of a distant past to be merciful to one another, because our 
Father is merciful to us all, has suddenly broken in upon 
the twentieth century, loud and compelling, like a trumpet- 
call close at hand. 

Never before were great nations so ready to listen to Jesus' 
message at this point. Kindness is a very humble virtue. 
A washerwoman or a bootblack might achieve it as well 
as a statesman or a captain of industry. Yet he made it 
the seal of the divine in human character. There was no 
such thing as noble character without it. One might be a 
genius in war or letters, but to be unmerciful was to be unlike 
God, and in the end to be brought to shame. The Most 
High is love. If we are indeed his children we shall be 
tenderhearted of necessity. 

Our study for this week deals with this fundamental 
element in great character. 

56 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-i] 

Fifth Week, First Day 

And if ye love them that love you, what thank have 
ye? for even sinners love those that love them. And if 
ye do good to them that do good to you, what thank 
have ye? for even sinners do the same. And if ye lend 
to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have 
ye? even sinners lend to sinners, to receive again as much. 
But love your enemies, and do them good, and lend, 
never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and ye 
shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward 
the unthankful and evil. Be ye merciful, even as your 
Father is merciful. — Luke 6 : 32-36. 

"As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways 
higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." 
The words of Jesus about love of one's enemies are in illus- 
tration of this ancient utterance. They bid us to be like 
God ; and we say it is impracticable, impossible. They may 
be most difficult as a command, but they are most comforting 
as a revelation of what God is like. However ill-tempered 
or unforgiving we may be by nature, it is good to know 
that our Father is not like us, but that his mercy utterly 
outruns our comprehension. And Jesus, knowing his Father 
as he did, could do nothing else than put kindness at the 
center of great character — because only so could the Son 
be like his Father. We may stagge'r at the necessity, but it 
is plainly a necessity if we are to be his followers. 

Without trying now to determine how far this command 
may reach at the farthest, let us recognize and accept what 
is beyond question — its homely application to common life. 
Probably most of us have no enemies worth calling such. 
The nearest approach to it are the people who, we think, 
don't do us justice, who don't like us, or have misunderstood 
us, or spoken or thought ill of us. They may even have 
done us ari ill turn. We retaliate by thinking hardly of them. 
Jesus calls us to a nobler mind — to treat them with good 
will, to seek their good instead of their humiliation, and to 
win them as God wins men, by love. 

O Lord! shed a new light on my relations with the people 
I do not like. Open my eyes to zvhatcver is mean, or un- 
generous, or unkind in my attitude, and give me a clearer 
vision of what thy love would have me be. 

S7 



lV-2] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Fifth Week, Second Day 

Ye have heard that it was said, An eye for an eye, and 
a tooth for a tooth: but I say unta you, Resist not him 
that is evil: but whosoever smiteth thee on thy right 
cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man would 
go to law with thee, and take away thy coat, let him have 
thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go 
one mile, go with him two. Give to him that asketh thee, 
and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou 
away. — Matt. 5:38-42. 

Let all bitterness, and wrath, and anger, and clamor, 
and railing, be put away from you, with all malice: and 
be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving each 
other, even as God also in Christ forgave you. — Eph. 
4:31, 32. 

What ordinary human nature wants in a quarrel is plain 
enough — it wants to give as good as it gets. In old times 
it wanted to give a good deal better ; and a great ethical 
advance was achieved when Moses held his people down to 
an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. There was a rude 
justice about this that seemed fairly satisfactory. But Jesus 
made it plain that this was not God's way. It is not even 
the way of our own fathers and mothers. Imagine a mother 
trying to "get even" with her children every time they dis- 
obeyed her or gave her pain ! How intolerable home 
would be! 

And so would our world be if God were to treat us in that 
fashion. But "he delighteth in mercy." He wins us to him 
by kindness that astonishes us. Jesus says, "One is your 
Father, and all ye are brethren." And from this he draws 
the inevitable conclusion that we must treat each other as 
God treats us — not retaliating with spitefulness for spiteful- 
ness and ill will for ill will, going through life standing 
stiffly on our rights, looking out sharply for slights and 
injuries, always ready for a quarrel; but generous and for- 
giving, v/inning our enemies by a good will that refuses to 
be defeated. 

God, give mc such a sense of thy lovingkindness to me 
personally as shall make it impossible for me to be harsh or 
ungenerous to any of thy children. 

58 



BE YE MERCIFUL [Y-z] 

Fifth Week, Third Day 

And as Jesus passed by from thence, he saw a man, 
called Matthew, sitting at the place of toll: and he saith 
unto him. Follow me. And he arose, and followed him. 

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat in the house, 
behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down 
with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees 
saw it, they said unto his disciples, Why eateth your 
Teacher with the publicans and sinners? But when he 
heard it, he said. They that are whole have no need of 
a physician, but they that are sick. But go ye and learn 
what this meaneth, I desire mercy, and not sacrifice: for 
I came not to call the righteous, but sinners. — Matt. 
9:9-13- 

There was a brief sentence in the Greek version of the 
Old Testament that had captured Jesus' thought years before, 
and on which he had evidently thought much. He quotes it 
repeatedly in defense of his own actions, "I will have mercy, 
and not sacrifice." It is a revelation of what God is like, 
and of what he wants of men if they are to please him' — 
not the stately worship of temple or cathedral, not even the 
sacrifice of the mass or the chanted creed of the true faith, 
but pity for the distressed, help for the weak, healing for 
the sick, loving sympathy for the unclean. 

It is easy at this distance to think of Jesus in a sentimental 
way as the friend of sinners ; but at the time, when there was 
no halo about his head or glamor about his person, his 
actions must have been a sore trial to one of such sensitive 
tastes. Certainly he found nothing congenial in the coarse- 
ness and vulgarity of that irreligious crowd of social out- 
casts. He chose their company by sheer compulsion of 
sympathy. He understood them and the struggle of the 
divine in them for life, and he gave himself to them as God 
has given himself to us. It is glad tidings in itself. It 
makes our coldly selfish world a different place to live in. 
But it constitutes a law for our lives if we would be his 
followers. 

So great an achievement in character will not come of 
itself while we are busy with our ozvn concerns. It will 
demand time and attention for the study of the needs and 
claims of people beyond our social horizon. 

59 



[V-4] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Fifth Week, Fourth Day 

And he departed thence, and went into their S5niagogue 
and behold, a man having a withered hand. And they 
asked him, saying. Is it lawful to heal on the sabbath 
day? that they might accuse him. And he said unto 
them, What man shall there be of you, that shall have 
one sheep, and if this fall into a pit on the sabbath day, 
will he not lay hold on it, and lift it out? How much 
then is a man of more value than a sheep! Wherefore 
it is lawful to do good on the sabbath day. Then saith 
he to the man, Stretch forth thy hand. And he stretched 
it forth; and it was restored whole, as the other. But 
the Pharisees went out, and took counsel against him, 
how they might destroy him. — Matt. 12:9-14. 

Those scribes and Pharisees were not consciously in the 
wrong that morning. They thought they had the right per- 
spective of values. Some things were unspeakably precious 
to them as safeguards of their national religion, especially 
the sanctity of the Sabbath. The man with the deformed 
hand, on the contrary, was of no account to them — they may 
have seen him every day for years and never even given a 
thought to his deformity. 

Jesus, on the other hand, was frankly sorry for the man. 
He thought what it would mean to him to be set free and 
made once more the breadwinner, instead of the burden of 
his family. He saw well enough that the sanctity of the 
Sabbath would not suffer from such a deed of pity. So he 
healed the man, even though by doing so he imperiled his 
own life. 

There we see what a really noble character is like. It 
is so much like God that it notices other people's distresses 
and makes an effort to relieve them, even at the cost of 
trouble to itself. Their troubles it makes its own concern. 
Numberless people in the eighteenth century bemoaned the 
sufferings of the prisoners; but only John Howard was 
great enough to make their wretchedness his own affair and 
give his life for their relief. 

Mercy such as this is divine, no matter where zve see it. 
If zve might spend our lives in some such service it would 
be a career of high distinction. 

60 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-5] 

Fifth Week, Fifth Day ^ 

After this manner therefore . pray ye: Our Father who 
art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give 
us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, 
as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not 
into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. For 
if ye forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father 
will also forgive you. But if ye forgive not men their 
trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your tres- 
passes. — Matt. 6:9-15. 

And whensoever ye stand praying, forgive, if ye have 
aught against any one; that your Father also who is in 
heaven may forgive you your trespasses. — Mark 11:25. 

We are all ready enough to admit that dishonesty or dissi- 
pation are enemies to good character ; the penalty for such 
weaknesses is only too certain. We are not so quick to see 
what a perilous thing it is to bear a grudge, to have an un- 
forgiving temper. Apparently in Jesus' mind it was more to 
be feared than the open loss of respectability incurred by 
some sin of indulgence. It was the one common sin of which 
he said that it shut one out from the mercy of God. We can, 
of course, differ with him, and count this a mere eccentricity 
of judgment on his part. But if he was right, then a good 
many so-called Christians are gravely wrong. Some even 
take pride in the fact that they are good friends but bad 
enemies — that they have a long memory for an injury. And 
a good many more, while not going as far as this, allow a 
hard word or a mean action from another to settle down into 
their lives like a drop of poison in a spring, embittering their 
thoughts and cankering for the time being their outlook upon 
life. Jesus was severe in his condemnation of this harsh- 
ness. And even in the brief prayer that he taught his disciples 
he committed them to an inexhaustible readiness to forgive. 

Every time we repeat the Lord's Prayer we say, Lord, 
treat me as I treat those who have offended me. 

Fifth Week, Sixth Day 

Then came Peter and said to him. Lord, how oft shall 
my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until 
seven times? Jesus saith unto him, I say not unto thee, 

61 



[V-6] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Until seven times; but. Until seventy times seven. There- 
fore is the kingdom of heavdn likened unto a certain 
king, who would make a reckoning with his servants. 
And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto 
• him, that owed him ten thousand talents. But forasmuch 
as he had not wherewith to pay, his lord commanded 
him to be sold, and his wife, and children, and all that 
he had, and payment to be made. The servant therefore 
fell down and worshipped him, saying. Lord, have patience 
with me, and I will pay thee all. And the lord of that 
servant, being moved with compassion, released him, and 
forgave him the debt. But that servant went out, and 
found one of his fellow-servants, who owed him a hundred 
shillings; and he laid hold on him, and took him by the 
throat, saying, Pay what thou owest. So his fellow- 
servant fell down and besought him, saying, Have 
patience with me, and I will pay thee. And he would 
not: but went and cast him into prison, till he should 
pay that which was due. So when his fellow-servants 
saw what was done, they were exceeding sorry, and came 
and told unto their lord all that was done. Then his 
lord called him unto him, and saith to him. Thou wicked 
servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou be- 
soughtest me: shouldest not thou also have had mercy 
on thy fellow-servant, even as I had mercy on thee? And 
his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors, 
till he should pay all that was due. So shall also my 
heavenly Father do unto you, if ye forgive not every one 
his brother from your hearts. — Matt. 18:21-35. 

"Shouldest not thou also have had mercy on thy fellow- 
servant even as I had mercy on thee?" That is the principle 
that underlies all Jesus' demands for kindness among his 
disciples. It is not an unconditioned ethical demand for 
benevolence in social relations. It is bound up with his 
Gospel of God's love. John put it in another form when 
he said, "If God so loved us, we also ought to love one 
another." If we are to have Christian character worthy 
of the name, it will be character in which the experience of 
our Father's forgiveness has a large place, and in such 
character harsh treatment of those who have offended us 
would be an enormity. By the time any of us are fifty, if we 
think only of the record of other lives that are the poorer 
for our unfaithfulness or indifference on innumerable occa- 

62 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-7] 

sions when we might have helped — a pitiful record of losses 
we can never overtake or cancel — we shall be sensible of 
the need of merciful forgiveness from God. And for us, 
who live in hope only because of our Father's goodness, to 
demand the last farthing of our rights from our neighbor, 
is unthinkable. The very suggestion of it roused the indigna- 
tion of Jesus. 

The gentleness of spirit that marks the noblest character 
and that always has been called par excellence the "Christian 
spirit," is rooted far down out of sight in the eternal fact 
of God's love. 

Fifth Week, Seventh Day 

And when they came unto the place which is called 
The skull, there they crucified him, and the malefactors, 
one on the right hand and the other on the left. And 
Jesus said. Father, forgive them; for they know not what 
they do. And parting his garments among them, they 
cast lots. And. the people stood beholding. And the 
rulers also scoffed at him, saying. He saved others; let 
him save himself, if this is the Christ of God, his chosen. 
And the soldiers also mocked him, coming to him, offer- 
ing him vinegar, and saying. If thou art the King of the 
Jews, save thyself. — Luke 23:33-37. 

And they stoned Stephen, calling upon the Lord, and 
saying. Lord Jesus, receive my spirit. And he kneeled 
down, and cried with a loud voice. Lord, lay not this 
sin to their charge. And when he had said this, he fell 
asleep. — Acts 7 : 59, 60. 

No words could so reenforce Jesus' insistence on forgiveness 
of injuries as does this brief ejaculation out of a tempest 
of pain just before his death. The Roman soldiers were 
used to seeing men, in the sudden onset of physical agony 
as they were being nailed to the cross, burst out upon them 
with delirious oaths and cursing, gnashing upon them like 
mad dogs in rage. We stand in awe at the grandeur of 
Jesus' spirit, that at that moment of supreme suiffering he 
was not swept out of his self-control by pain, but was actually 
thinking of those poor callous wretches who tortured him. 
He was so far master of himself that the ruling spirit of 
forgiveness, strong in death, rose triumphantly over all 



[V-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

other feelings. It is beyond us. We see again what God 
is like. It is a super-victory over human nature. 

But it reminds us that the divinest thing in us is not that 
which cries out for vengeance on those who have done us 
wrong. As Edith Cavell said, a few hours before she was 
led out to be shot, with the clear vision of one standing on 
the edge of eternity, "I realize that patriotism is not enough. 
I must have no hatred nor bitterness toward anyone." We 
recognize in that utterance the very spirit of Jesus. 

In the presence of death, forgiveness seems a necessary 
thing. Jesus calls for it in the heyday of vigorous life. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

The motif of all the passages for this week is found in 
the word of Jesus, "Ye shall be sons of the Most High." 
He brings the sanction of a divine heredity to reenforce the 
plain ethical demand for human kindness. Noblesse oblige. 
"You are of the nobility ; live nobly, then, with your fellows." 
We can make little headway in the understanding of his 
argument save as we share his confidence in the lovingkind- 
ness of our Father, a lovingkindness that reacheth unto the 
heavens. If we are to measure ourselves and our obligations 
by anything less than this — as by social expediency or a 
humanitarian idealism — we shall fall a good deal short of 
sympathy with him who spoke as the Elder Brother of the 
great family, strong in the assurance of an eternal power 
of love binding the family together. Like a wireless instru- 
ment not attuned to the vibrations of the sender, we shall be 
unable to catch his spirit if we have no personal experience 
of our Father's infinite mercy and forgiveness. 

Everyone today must be conscious of a grave danger of 
unreality in discussing these sayings of our Lord, because 
we have known what it is to be swept away from our ordinary 
moorings by the strong passions of the War. Whatever 
measure of assent we might have been able to accord them 
in days of peace, we realize that new and strange forces have 
been at work upon us to make us either disregard their appli- 
cation to our enemies, or else profcaS them with a half- 

64 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-c] 

heartedness or insincerity that endangers our whole loyalty 
to Jesus' leadership. 

It is of no use to try to evade the problem here presented. 
We must have sincerity at any cost. Even if we were 
obliged squarely to differ with Jesus at this point, it would 
be better to be honest in our demand for truth than to part 
company with reality in our profession of obedience. He 
unquestionably warns men against anger, evil-speaking, and 
the use of force. And yet we have found ourselves involved, 
with all Christendom, in a war to the death, with all the 
merciless horror that that implies. Are we just so far untrue 
to him? Some earnest voices about us, mostly silenced in 
actual war-time, say emphatically yes. Jesus refused to use 
or countenance force. We cannot be his disciples, they say, 
and approve of war. The inconsistency of it is not only 
manifest but glaringly grotesque. What answer can be made 
that will satisfy our own misgivings? 

II 

In our study of these passages it is only reasonable to 
inquire first as to the field of their undisputed application. 
It has always been recognized that there must needs be a 
considerable borderland for possible casuistry as regard^ 
perplexing or exceptional situations. But the main field is 
perfectly clear and well-defined, and we have no excuse for 
not reaching assured conclusions. Jesus is plainly speaking 
of the ordinary personal intercourse of man with man and- 
neighbor with neighbor. 

He declares first of all that, in order to be his disciple, 
one under provocation must not only refrain from violence 
to his brother — keeping the ancient command to do no murder 
— but must hold to his attitude of fundamental good will. 
To give rein to passion and pour out in language all the 
hatred and ill will that would use violence if it dared, is 
to be false to the brotherly spirit of the new kingdom and 
to betray the presence of a heart defiant of God's command. 
Wrangling and quarreling will spoil the life of a disciple 
of Jesus as effectually as assault and murder, and words 
of cold bitterness will slay a loving temper like a sword-thrust. 
It is perfectly obvious what our Lord was trying to enforce, 

65 



[V-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

and if we accept his faith in a true Fatherhood and brother- 
hood for men we cannot withhold our assent. It forbids all 
rancor and hatred in our social relations, even at the cost of 
stern self-control under acute exasperation. Even if we have 
suffered heavy injury, the attempt to take it out in violent 
language or personal abuse of our assailant merely reacts 
upon the peace and health of our own soul. 

The teaching is at all times far from easy to obey, and we 
may poorly attain to it. But it is at least intelligible and 
reasonable, and if we propose to be followers of Jesus we 
shall be sincerely honest in our effort to reach it. But with 
war, elements utterly new enter into the situation. What 
is plain enough in the ordinary relations of life becomes a 
hopeless enigma when we face the ruthless enemies of a 
world peace. Are we to pretend to use toward them the 
language of brotherly love? 

Certainly a different principle is here involved. Jesus was 
speaking about personal rancor. It is clear that he was not 
thinking about judicial condemnation of evil, or moral in- 
dignation at the wrongs of others. We cannot imagine him 
angrily reviling a personal adversary; but neither can we 
imagine anyone speaking with more piercing severity than 
did he when he said to his friend, "Get thee behind me, 
Satan," or called the Pharisees a generation of vipers and 
children of hell. Often he spoke out the truth when the 
truth cut like a knife and infuriated his hearers. No man 
ever shrank less from hurting people's feelings, when it was 
for their good that they should be hurt, or when it was for 
the benefit of others that the truth should be frankly ex- 
posed. Nor would he ask men to veil the truth behind an 
affectation of pious unwillingness to condemn. There are 
times of peril, when the common welfare demands the ex- 
posure of flagrant wrong in words that scorch like a flame, 
and a steady witness against it, while the peril lasts, in the 
merciless sternness of • white-hot moral indignation. Even 
such language may spring from a root of love, and be not 
inconsistent with the good will of which Jesus spoke. 

Ill 

We come now from words to deeds. Jesus unquestionably 
forbade the use of force in our ordinary personal relations. 

66 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-c] 

It is not by blows that our wrongs are to be set right. Plainly 
there is a better wisdom, and love is the weapon by which 
his disciples were to win their way through life. Still more 
evident is it that Jesus himself did not use force. He was 
led as a sheep to the slaughter, and as a lamb before her 
shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. His whole 
career was one which discouraged the use of violence. And 
we of today have seen good men leaving their pulpits because 
they, remembering how Jesus refused to make use of force 
in the righting of wrong, could not conscientiously approve 
the appeal to war. Did they rightly appraise his teaching, 
and are those who take part in such a world struggle untrue 
to his example? 

It is to be firmly insisted on that in all these sayings Jesus 
is neither thinking nor speaking of the judicial or civic 
processes that may be necessary for the maintenance of social 
order — any more than he meant to do away with courts and 
judges when he said, "Judge not that ye be not judged." The 
words plainly apply to personal relationships, and are mis- 
understood and misapplied when applied to social institu- 
tions. Jesus lived with his mother and sisters in the little 
village of Nazareth in perfect security, because the strong 
arm of the Roman government was interposed between them 
and the marauding tribes of the desert to the East. It is 
absurd to suppose that when he said, "Resist not evil" he 
meant that the strong arm of the law should be withdrawn, 
and the common people of Galilee be exposed to the ravages 
of pillaging invaders. He recognized the need and the 
beneficence of a civil government's using force. 

Moreover, it is to be kept clearly in mind that while Jesus' 
refusal to use force was necessary to the carrying out of his 
own function in the world, it by no means implies that a 
different function would not demand a different method. As 
he said himself, "I came not to judge the world, but to save 
the world"; "there is one that judgeth." It was not his 
function either to pronounce or to execute judgment. But 
it was someone's function! He left men in no doubt as to 
that. He himself wept over guilty Jerusalem. But he plainly 
warned her that, in the righteous plan of God, her day of 
retribution was close at hand. Once the impetuosity of his 
indignation almost led him to overstep his function, when 

6- 



[V-c] BUILDING ON ROCK J»! 

he took upon himself the neglected duty of the police and 
drove out bodily from the temple those who trespassed on 
the people's rights. Suppose he had been the one legitimately 
responsible for the maintenance of those rights, instead of 
one quite without authority in the premises. Would he have 
suffered the wrong in passive forbearance? 

We remember his terrible denunciation of the men who 
devoured widows' houses, in words that must have burned 
like corrosive acid. Suppose that instead of being the Great 
Teacher and Good Physician he had been the District Attor- 
ney for Jerusalem, charged with the rooting out of all that 
gang of grafters, both respectable and vicious, who preyed 
on the weak and friendless. Suppose that the protection of 
the rights of the poor against the aggressions of the powerful 
rested directly upon him. It would have been a goodly and 
a godly work, but it would have led him through some 
strange scenes of violence if those Jewish plunderers had been 
as truculent as are the human sharks who prey on the bodies 
and souls of men in our cities today. Jesus never challenged, 
directly or indirectly, the necessity for this function of the 
State or of its servants, for the guarding of the people in 
quiet security from the cruel enemies who lay in wait for 
them like wolves. We believe he would have aided it in 
every way in his power. He would have rendered to Caesar 
the things that are Caesar's. 

This undoubted function of government ordinarily involves 
only the sm.all circle of those officially appointed to protect 
liie public and maintain order. The mass of the people are 
left free to pursue their several ways in safety. Indeed, for 
them to use violence in the maintenance of their rights — to 
take the law in their own hands — is not only to disobey the 
teaching of Jesus but to be guilty of a criminal offense. But 
occasionally, as in these past two years, the safety of the 
people may be so imperiled, their fundamental rights, under 
which alone a life of peace and happiness is possible, may be 
so invaded, that the State calls for the help of every able- 
bodied citizen ; not only of the little circle of official guardians 
of the peace, but of millions, who are thus suddenly sum- 
moned from a life of peace to share the burden of stern war 
— to take up this divinely ordained function of maintaining 
justice and judgment and upholding the public righteousness, 

68 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-c] 

without which the joy of the common people is turned to 
distress and even nations are brought to destruction. 

Would Jesus counsel these citizens to defy the State's 
beneficent authority, to refuse the summons, and let the wolf- 
pack ravage as it will? Does love of one's neighbor demand 
that we should turn our backs when ravening outrage and 
cruelty have broken loose upon those we are able to defend? 
Does the spirit of good will and pity demand that we should 
stop our ears and pass by on the other side when the man 
on the Jericho road is at his last gasp under the robbers' 
hands? It is impossible for us so to construe the teaching 
or the example of our Lord. As a matter of human experi- 
ence, love does not so interpret its duty. If we as indi- 
viduals are authoritatively called against our wills to be the 
defenders of another's peace, when that peace is threatened 
with violence, we act unselfishly and impersonally in obeying; 
and it would seem to be in harmony with the spirit of Jesus 
that we should be bravely faithful to that trust, undesired, 
but thrust upon us at heavy cost to our ease and safety. 

* IV 

But even this does not wholly answer our perplexity. The 
act of war involves us in hideous incongruities as Christians. 
It is certainly possible for the noblest type of man to fight 
without hatred or bitterness. General Lee and many another 
great soldier have placed this beyond dispute. But how can 
anything be approved by God that is attended in actual fact 
by the unleashed passion and furious rage of men past all 
control in the delirium of hand-to-hand fighting? Here is 
where many find an insoluble enigma, that seems to baffle all 
apology or explanation for Christian men. If men charged 
with overthrowing rampant wickedness were able to act as 
God's instruments with the cold passionless severity of a 
legion of angels, the problem would disappear. But as it is, 
their unfitness for such a task is pitifully manifest. 

One can only answer that this is true. The human instru- 
ments are imperfect and unworthy, and under fierce strain 
the unworthiness may become even shockingly apparent. And 
yet, the imperfection with which they carry out their grim 
task of punishing evil does not make the task itself unright- 
eous or unworthy. As well might one say that the whole 

69 



[V-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

judicial and penal system of society should be abandoned, 
because society has always flagrantly mishandled the task, 
and even till today our jails and prisons have often been 
hotbeds of abuse. The teaching of Jesus is not that we 
should abandon the effort to police our cities or to protect 
the State from organized vice and crime, because the admin- 
istration of the law has always been so wretchedly imperfect. 

The tiger in us lies not far below the surface, and many 
a necessary situation with which life at its present stage of 
development compels us to grapple brings the hateful qualities 
of a fighting animal into prominence. And yet, whether done 
well or ill, the work has to be done. If a man is fighting 
drunk and threatening to murder his wife and children, it 
is a horrid thing to see a policeman leap upon him and at 
last club him into insensibility before he can be thrust into 
the patrolwagon. And yet, distressing and odious as it is. 
and little as we should like to do it, the job has somehow 
to be done, and done on the instant, if the woman's life is 
to be protected. We may grant that it is the shame and 
punishment of society for its sins, either that a man should 
be fighting drunk or that a people should be so misled as to 
run amuck among its neighbors. We hope that the day is 
nearly past when such things can be. But so long as the 
cries of the tortured are in our ears, so long are the strong 
called to be the defenders of the weak; even though the 
strong are not without fault, and even betray, in responding 
to the call, that they, too, have need of God's forgiveness 
for their flaming temper. 

Our whole discussion up to this point has been of a rare 
and terrible exception to the ordinary tenor of human life. 
As life is today, we have been forced to assume the un- 
familiar and uncongenial function of impersonal executors 
of the will of the State, in resisting by force a cruel invasion 
of human rights. But it is an exception as rare as it is 
terrible, and, please God, it will never occur again in the 
experience of those now living. It should not fill our horizon, 
or blind us for a moment to the fact that, while war passes, 
there abides unchanging forever the necessity that the sons 
of the Most High should be tender-hearted, forgiving one 
another, even as God in Christ forgave them. 

Even in war-time, the deepest levels of our thinking cannot 
70 



BE YE MERCIFUL [V-c] 

be of strife and human enmities. God comes first and last 
in each conscious day, and facing Him we face the redeem- 
j ing power of love unto death. It is love that will win the 
day in the far end, because God is God, and we dare not 
lose touch with it. Even for ourselves, the only hope is in 
the forgiveness of God, and this being so we dare not set 
any limits to our forgiveness of others. 

Jesus does not ask us for the impossible. Even God 
cannot forgive an impenitent man. There is no way to close 
the circuit of forgiveness if the offender refuses to be for- 
given. Forgiveness without righteousness works worse evils 
than it cures, like a mother's indulgence of a spoiled child. 
But within the limits of the possible, Jesus calls for the 
utmost friendliness that can be exercised. Indeed, he shuts 
us out from the divine compassion if we are ourselves hard- 
hearted and unforgiving. Every time that we recite the 
Lord's Prayer in such a spirit we shut the gates of mercy 
on ourselves. As A. W. Hare long ago expressed it, in the 
"prayer of the unforgiving man" : 

"O God, I have sinned against thee many times from my 
youth up until now. I have often been forgetful of thy 
goodness ; I have not duly thanked thee for thy mercies ; 
I have neglected thy service ; I have broken thy laws ; I have 
done many things utterly wrong against thee. . . . Such is 
my guiltiness, O Lord, in thy sight; deal with me, I be- 
seech thee, even as I deal with my neighbor. He has not 
offended me one-tenth, one hundredth part as much as I 
have offended thee; but he has offended me very grievously, 
and I cannot forgive him. Deal with me, I beseech thee, O 
Lord, as I deal with him. ... I remember and treasure up 
every little trifle which shows how ill he has behaved to me. 
I am determined to take the very first opportunity of doing 
him an ill turn. Deal with me, I beseech thee, O Lord, as 
I deal with him." 

We wish to keep the gates of mercy wide open for our- 
selves ; but in sober truth it is our own attitude to our fellow- 
men which determines how far open they shall be — not 
through any arbitrary enactment of God, but in the natural 
working out of his moral order. A hard, grudging temper 
on our part shows that we have not ourselves the penitent 
and humble spirit that alone makes it possible for Grod 

71 . 



[V-cJ BUILDING ON ROCK 

abundantly to forgive. We will not let his love completely 
in. Any sort of external or mechanical forgiveness we would 
accept, but the only real forgiveness that there can be — 
the breaking down of our selfish will and the subduing of 
our whole heart with thankful love and penitence — that we 
cannot have, if we are to hold on to our stubborn hardness 
to our brother. 

And so it is a vital matter for Christian character that 
it should be tender-hearted. We have seen enough of a 
Christianity that can be satisfied with itself even when it is 
clean out of touch with its Master in this respect. The world 
groaned under the curse of it. It is for us to see to it that, 
in the tiny segment of Christendom which we fill, the spirit 
of Jesus actually is in control. 



72 



CHAPTER VI 

Intensity of Purpose 

DAILY READINGS 

We are familiar today with the faces of the Caesars, and 
even the rulers of Egypt long before Rome's greatness are 
not unknown to us. But no likeness of Jesus, of any sort, 
has been preserved. We know nothing of how he looked. 
And yet we need no one to tell us that, when at the age of 
thirty he left his home in Nazareth, he was not a young man 
with a weak mouth and feeble chin. Whatever else was in 
his face, lirmness was there, and a resolute intensity that 
spoke of a purpose slowly matured and inflexible as iron. 
Certain writers of our day would almost make us feel that 
we are weak-minded if we trust in a Heavenly Father. But 
when we turn to him who is the Leader of all such as put 
their trust in God, we recognize with proud confidence that 
of all strong souls he was the strongest. He calmly planted 
a world-wide kingdom where men could see no room even 
for a Jewish sect to grow. He gave his life unhesitatingly 
for its establishment, because it meant righteousness and joy 
for men. There was an intensity about his purpose that did 
not spring from narrowness, but was rooted in clear vision 
of realities that run far out beyond our worldly horizons. 

And in the nature of the case he called his followers and 
disciples to a like singleness of aim, stronger than life or 
death. He shared with them his vision, and he required 
of them the same dedication of themselves to the great re- 
deeming plan of God. The only type of character which 
he could approve, or for which he could be held responsible, 
was one built up in a thoroughgoing, uncalculating devotion 
to a supreme end. The passages for the week reiterate this 
necessity from various angles. 

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[VI-i] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Sixth Week, First Day 

And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must 
suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, and 
the chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after 
three days rise again. And he spake the saying openly. 
And Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. But he 
turning about, and seeing his disciples, rebuked Peter, 
and saith, Get thee behind me, Satan; for thou mindest 
not the things of God, but the things of men. And he 
called unto him the multitude with his disciples, and 
said unto them, If any man would come after me, let 
him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me. 
For whosoever would save his life shall lose it; and who- 
soever shall lose his life for my sake and the gospel's 
shall save it. For what doth it profit a man, to gain the 
whole world, and forfeit his life? For what should a man 
give in exchange for his life? For whosoever shall be 
ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and 
sinful generation, the Son of man also shall be ashamed 
of him, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with 
the holy angels. — Mark 8:31-38. 

It is best to face at once this unwelcome assertion of the 
general principle involved, which men will always quote as its 
classical expression. It is the summing up of a necessity- 
imbedded in the nature of the Christian life. There can be 
no genuine Christianity without it, although the Church has 
often pushed it clear out of sight because of the awkward 
obtrusiveness of such a requirement in a comfortable reli- 
gion. Doctrines that the Church insisted on as essential to 
salvation, people used to believe easily; but it has never been 
easy anywhere to get men and v/omen to deny themselves. 

And yet there is no escaping the fact that this is where 
Jesus starts in the building of his disciples' character. "If 
any man would come after me, let him deny himself . . . and 
follow me," Of course there always are and have been many 
people who are so taken up with the joy and privilege of the 
last part of the command — following him — that they obey 
the first part almost unconsciously in an abandonment of 
self-forgetfulness. It is the most natural thing in the world 
for them to do, and one might almost say the easiest. The 
woman at the feast of Simon, or Zacchaeus in his luxurious 
home in Jericho, or Mary with her sister at Bethany — they 

74 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-2I 

quite forgot themselves in their eagerness to show their 
gratitude to the Friend who had brought them the joy of life. 
And, thank God ! this is what Jesus meant by the command. 
Not an ascetic prescription of a disagreeable duty, but a 
call to a devotion so hearty, so overwhelmingly glad and 
grateful, that self somehow shrinks unnoticed into the back- 
ground. 

"Love took up the harp of Life, and smote on all the chords 
with might; 
Smote the chord of Self, that, trembling, pass'd in music 
out of sight." 

But this is truly a divine achievement. 

Sixth Week, Second Day 

Now there went with him great multitudes: and he 
turned, and said unto them, If any man cometh unto me, 
and hateth not his own father, and mother, and wife, and 
children, and brethren, and sisters, yea, and his own life 
also, he cannot be my disciple. Whosoever doth not 
bear his own cross, and come after me, cannot be my 
disciple. For which of you, desiring to build a tower, 
doth not first sit down and count the cost, whether he 
have wherewith to complete it? Lest haply, when he 
hath laid a foundation, and is not able to finish, all that 
behold begin to mock him, saying. This man began to 
build, and was not able to finish. Or what king, as he 
goeth to encounter another king in war, will not sit down 
first and take counsel whether he is able with ten thou- 
sand to meet him that cometh against him with twenty 
thousand? Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, 
he sendeth an ambassage, and asketh conditions of peace. 
So therefore whosoever he be of you that renounceth not 
all that he hath, he cannot be my disciple. — Luke 14: 
25-33- 

The most desirable goods are never to be had at the bargain 
counter, in spite of human nature's quenchless hope that the 
best values can somehow be got for less than cost. Nowhere 
does this hold more true than in the field of character, 
although here also men have always been seeking cheap and 
easy ways to get a priceless good. Jesus seems to have 
gone almost to the extreme in his anxiety to shake off those 

75 



[VI-3] BUILDING ON ROCK 

who were merely looking for bargains in the spiritual realm. 
Great multitudes were following him about, as though they 
were ready to cast in their all with him. Yet he knew that 
they were under a delusion, expecting benefits for which 
they would never pay the price. They really cared neither 
for him nor for his kingdom. So he tried almost roughly to 
discourage them from a moral enterprise for which they had 
no courage. He bade them to reckon up the cost before they 
made foolish promises that they would never keep. How 
much did they care for him and for his leadership? Did 
they honestly put him before anything else in life? If not, 
their freshly blossoming loyalty would never live through the 
storms of the next few months. 

So he shook them off. There was no help for it. They 
were not in earnest. It had not dawned on them that this 
was a life-and-death matter. They would join him as lightly 
as our men joined the National Guard in the old days, and 
not as they enlisted later with France and the blood-soaked 
trenches only a few months away. 

One cannot join the Army in war-time as a side-issue to 
other interests in life. No more can one take up casually 
with the leadership of Jesus.- 

Sixth Week, Third Day 

And as they went on the way, a certain man said unto 
him, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And 
Jesus said unto him. The foxes have holes, and the birds 
of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not 
where to lay his head. And he said unto another, Follow 
me. But he said. Lord, suffer me first to go and bury my 
father. But he said unto him, Leave the dead to bury 
their own dead; but go thou and publish abroad the 
kingdom of God. And another also said, I will follow 
thee. Lord; but first suffer me to bid farewell to them 
that are at my house. But Jesus said unto him, No man, 
having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is 
fit for the kingdom of God. — Luke 9:57-62. 

Possibly there were some generals in the War, a place on 
whose staff was looked on as a soft berth. But of a cer- 
tainty there were others whose very attraction was that they 

76 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE IVI-4] 

treated their aides as hardly as they did themselves. Their 
whole life was so absorbed in the struggle of the War, that 
privation and danger and death were simply not to be re~ 
garded as deterrent factors. They had a scorn like Kitchener's 
for indolent, ease-loving persons who yet like to wear a 
uniform. They used men without sparing them. 

Jesus was such a leader. Especially as he began to come 
within sight of his own tragic end, did he startle his hearers 
with hard utterances that would never have come to his lips 
in the earlier days in Galilee. A forsaken man under the 
shadow of death does not talk in the same way as a hopeful 
young reformer in the springtime of his popularitj^ How- 
ever gallant his own spirit, an unwonted type of sternness is 
apt to creep into his utterances. And Jesus was so weary of 
men and women who would not take life seriously, who 
would not stand the strain of character-building under his 
leadership ! Again and again he seems deliberately to have 
set himself to discourage them, as in this passage, from im- 
pulsive profession of discipleship. 

No one would be more regardful of real filial piety than 
he who rebuked the Pharisees for holding it lightly. But 
he would not allow it to be pleaded insincerely as an excuse 
for putting off decision in a moral crisis. These men were 
facing a spiritual emergency of inexpressible consequence 
to themselves and others — they must meet it with an unfalter- 
ing decision. A.nything less on their part showed that they 
did not know what they were about. 

When we discuss our personal attitude to the leadership of 
Jesus, we are not discussing a hypothetical problem of 
academic interest, but the crucial factor in our soul's life 
and health. 

Sixth Week, Fourth Day 

And one said unto him, Lord, are they few that are 
saved? And he said unto them. Strive to enter in by the 
narrow door: for many, I say unto you, shall seek to 
enter in, and shall not be able. When once the master 
of the house is risen up, and hath shut to the door, and 
ye begin to stand without, and to knock at the door, say- 
ing, Lord, open to us; and he shall answer and say to 
you, I know you not whence ye are; then shall ye begin to 

77 



lVI-4] BUILDING ON ROCK 

say, We did eat and drink in thy presence, and thou didst 
teach in our streets; and he shall say, I tell you, I know 
not whence ye are; depart from me, all ye workers of 
iniquity. There shall be the weeping and the gnashing 
of teeth, when ye shall see Abraham, and Isaac, and 
Jacob, and all the prophets, in the kingdom of God, and 
yourselves cast forth without. And they shall come from 
the east and west, and from the north and south, and 
shall sit down in the kingdom of God. And behold, 
there are last who shall be first, and there are first who 
shall be last. — Luke 13:23-30. 

These words may have become commonplace to us from 
long familiarity. But they must have been rather dreadful 
to listen to when they were first spoken, out of a solemn 
intensity of conviction. And still there is an air of doom 
about them. We would like to live in a world with no doom 
in it, no irretrievable loss, no too costly error. But Jesus 
was only enunciating, as regards supreme values, the principle 
that is plain enough in lesser things. The seemingly privi- 
leged and favored, who rely only upon their pull to carry 
them into the best positions, simply have no chance in any 
day of ultimate awards, as against the men from nowhere 
w^ho have struggled fiercely for years to fit themselves for 
those responsibilities. 

It is as true in the field of the spirit as in the world of 
railroading or engineering. Drifting may carry one long 
distances, but in the end of the day it lands no one where 
he wants to go. And if a man is not to be in deadly earnest 
about his own soul — truth and honor and faith and love, for 
his own sake and others' — in Heaven's name what is he to 
be earnest about? It is conceded that it is the mark of a live 
man to be enthusiastic in love and business and sport and 
politics and war ; but to be enthusiastic about the Christian 
life is generally considered, especially in academic circles, 
to be in bad form. Jesus here tells us in homely phrase 
what he thinks about it. "Strive to enter in by the narrow 
door, for many shall seek to enter in, and shall not be 
able." It is the great adventure. It must be made when 
one's will is still responsive to one's command. It is not 
too easy for the strongest, and yet easy enough for timid 
souls like Mr. Faintheart and Mr. Fearing. 

78 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-5] 

Sixth Week, Fifth Day 

Think not that I came to send peace on the earth: I 
came not to send peace, but a sword. For I came to set 
a man at variance against his father, and the daughter 
against her mother, and the daughter in law against her 
mother in law: and a man's foes shall be they of his 
own household. He that loveth father or mother more 
than me is not worthy of me; and he that loveth son 
or daughter more than me is not worthy of me. And he 
that doth not take his cross and follow after me, is not 
worthy of me. He that findeth his life shall lose it; and 
he that loseth his life for my sake shall find it. — Matt. 

10:34-39- 

Brethren, I count not myself yet to have laid hold: but 
one thing I do, forgetting the things which are behind, 
and stretching forward to the things which are before, I 
press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high call- 
ing of God in Christ Jesus. — Phil. 3: 13, 14. 

There have been times when Christians were expected, so 
to speak, to be at ease in Zion, when to be a disciple of Jesus 
was supposed to mean a life of placid tranquillity, as be- 
fitted one who had made his peace with God. But wherever 
Jesus is in this world, there is strife and turmoil. You 
might as well plant a boulder in the middle of a swift stream 
and expect it to hold its place without rippling the oily 
smoothness of the current. You might as well place good 
Mr. Faithful in the streets of Vanity Fair and expect to 
avoid a collision and a brawl. The mob will surge down on 
Faithful, just as the white foam will leap about the obstruct- 
ing boulder. 

Jesus was under no illusion as to the clashing of wills 
that must take place in human society if a man stands firm 
for the pure, just will of God. There must be iron in his 
soul if he expects to win out in such a determination. If the 
path of least resistance is what he wants, the sooner he loses 
sight of Jesus Christ the better. For example, in the fields 
of art and literature and journalism, of law or politics, what 
chance has one of holding true to the principles of Jesus, 
unless he has a fidelity like tested steel? A half-and-half 
purpose, that only now and then quite masters his affection, 
is no good. He must count on painful and persistent opposi- 

79 



[VI-6] BUILDING ON ROCK 

tion from within and without if he is to build a character 
after his Master's pattern. 

It is the testimony of life that he who does yield up his 
life heartily to his AI aster's use, finds it again in a new rich- 
ness, not for himself only, but for his fellows. 

Sixth Week, Sixth Day 

And his disciples asked him what this parable might 
be. And he said, Unto you it is given to know the 
mysteries of the kingdom of God: but to the rest in 
parables; that seeing they may not see, and hearing they 
may not understand. Now the parable is this: The seed 
is the word of God. And those by the v/ay side are they 
that have heard; then cometh the devil, and taketh away 
the word from their heart, that they may not believe 
and be saved. And those on the rock are they who, when 
they have heard, receive the word with joy; and these 
have no root, who for a while believe, and in time of 
temptation fall away. And that which fell among the 
thorns, these are they that have heard, and as they go 
on their way they are choked with cares and riches and 
pleasures of this life, and bring no fruit to perfection. 
And that in the good ground, these are such as in an 
honest and good heart, having heard the word, hold it 
fast, and bring forth fruit with patience. — Luke 8:9-15. 

People sometimes take credit to themselves for their 
churchgoing — that they have chosen so excellent a church 
and sit under so powerful a preacher. We like to think that 
we are the better for listening to noble words. But, as 
Jesus pointed out, we might even sit under his preaching 
week by week and be none the better. Not hearing his words, 
but doing them, is the test of character. Especially do we 
need to remember what he said of those who had the finest 
teaching, and had a sincere purpose to shape their lives upon 
it, but whose characters grew shrivelled and useless because 
the divine in them was spoiled by the crowding pressure of 
other interests. The good seed was fairly choked as it grew, 
by competing cares and riches and pleasures, till their life 
became in God's sight a tragedy. They should have known 
that they could not successfully serve God and mammon, but 
they tried to do the impossible. 

80 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-7] 

An enlisted man on reaching camp is not left twelve hours 
to doubt that he has been clean shorn away from his old 
life, and that henceforth Uncle Sam comes first every hour 
of the twenty-four. No one claims that there can be efficient 
military service without this absolute priority. And there is 
simply no escaping the fact that Jesus makes the same sort 
of claim on a life under his leadership. The committal to 
God's will takes precedence of every other interest. Only by 
such unqualified simplicity of aim can we keep ourselves 
steadily in fellowship with our Leader. Many know what it 
is to see men and women leaving college with a high, unselfish 
idealism, whose very faces, after a few years in active life, 
reveal that what was noblest in them is being clouded over. 

Sixth Week, Seventh Day 

And they come to Jericho: and as he went out from 
Jericho, with his disciples and a great muhitude, the son 
of Timaeus, Bartimaeus, a blind beggar, was sitting by 
the way side. And when he heard that it was Jesus the 
Nazarene, he began to cry out, and say, Jesus, thou son 
of David, have mercy oti me. And many rebuked him, 
that he should hold his peace: but he cried out the more 
a great deal. Thou son of David, have mercy on me. 
And Jesus stood still, and said. Call ye him. And they 
call the blind man, saying unto him, Be of good cheer: 
rise, he calleth thee. And he, casting away his garment, 
sprang up, and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered him, 
and said, What wilt thou that I should do unto thee? 
And the blind man said unto him, Rabboni, that I may 
receive my sight. And Jesus said unto him. Go thy way; 
thy faith hath made thee whole. And straightway he 
received his sight, and followed him in the way. — Mark 
10: 46-52. 

This passage is added as an illustration of the way in 
which a determined purpose draws to its aid resources of 
help that otherwise would be unavailable. The very audacity 
of intense desire cuts a way where timidity would find no way 
open. Especially is this true of our relations with a God of 
infinite resource, where Jesus encourages men to throw them- 
selves boldly on his helpful good will. A fervent ambition 
to be what he would have us be finds unexpected means of 
success at its disposal, means that in actual experience con- 

81 



[VI-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

tinually revive a drooping or discouraged spirit. Not only 
does such a determination constantly react upon itself in the 
v/ay of auto-suggestion, denying the possibility of defeat, but 
it actually reaches to strata of life-giving impulse that the 
indifferent or do.ubting man never discovers. 

Here was this blind beggar, sitting listlessly by the road- 
side in the sun, like hundreds of other blind beggars all over 
Syria. No way .of escape from their misery presented itself 
to the imagination of all those others. But with Bartimseus 
a hope sprang up that, once entertained, refused to be dis- 
missed. His presumption and his pertinacity were a scandal 
even to the crowd. Jesus was not only not angry, but took 
sides with the disturber at once. And the man received his 
sight. 

For all we know there may have been scores of others 
more worthy to receive such a blessing than he. But this 
particular beggar dared to venture all on the Master's readi- 
ness to help ; and the audacious obstinacy of his confidence 
actually made a way to the light of day for him who had been 
blind. Only a deep-seated purpose lays two worlds tributary 
to the success of its desire. 

"They that wait upon the Lord shall renew their strength; 
they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, 
and not be zveary . . . they shall walk, and not faint." 



COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

Many old lessons, long forgotten, are being relearned by 
Christendom under the influence of the World War. One 
is, that complete self-denial is not so difficult for common 
men, if the emergency be urgent enough to drown selfish 
consideration out of sight for the time being. Ordinarily, 
men sharply resent any interference on the part of the State 
with the ordered convenience of their lives. They raise an 
outcry over a call to jury duty; they resent being summoned 
as witnesses ; they pay taxes grudgingly, and throw obstacles 
in the way of any inquiry into their private affairs. They 
feel that they have an inalienable right to mind their own 

82 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-c] 

business in their own way, and any rights the State may 
have in them are of the most shadowy character. 

Yet now, under the stunning impact of the War, we have 
seen men allowing the State, without a word of protest, to 
lay hands on all they have and are. They give up their 
business, they lay aside personal tastes and long established 
habits, they say good-by to home and family, they even submit 
their carefully groomed bodies to exposure and sickness and 
wounds and death uncomplainingly, accepting it all without 
debate as part of a reasonable order which no honorable 
citizen would refuse. The impossible sacrifice of self had 
become for them not only possible but easy, because of the 
stress of a national crisis vaster than they could comprehend. 
Men under those conditions do not even attempt to argue — 
they obey, as under a clear intuition of necessity. 

And under the actual discipline of life in the trenches, 
this lesson of smilingly accepting another's will for the sake 
of the common good becomes like a second nature. As 
Harvey Johnson, the "Yankee Kid," has said, after his two 
years of perilous service, "I learned to take my medicine 
without squealing. I learned that you can do most anything 
if you tell yourself you've got to do it I learned to take 
responsibility and to obey orders — what you'd call discipline, 
I guess. I learned to stand things, and to do it with a smile. 
If I ever forget that, I'll have forgotten how I saw men 
fight and die. And I guess when I forget that, I won't 
remember anything." 

That is what war teaches about self-denial. 

Jesus evidently looked out on the struggle of life like 
a man under war conditions. His whole being thrilled to 
the sense of a world emergency, submerging petty thoughts 
of private ease. He made amazing demands on men, with- 
out apology or, as we might think, without even adequate 
explanation. It was as though, with so many Frenchmen of 
late, the unspoken words "C'est la guerre" were just below 
the surface, making all intelligible, calling men to endurance 
or to heroism commonly beyond their reach. The contest 
was, for Jesus, one that involved eternal and infinite values 
for all mankind. It engaged his whole soul. How then 
could he speak of this moral warfare without a thrilling 
intensity of feeling? 

83 



[VI-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 



II 



There are certain clever writers in our day — or were before 
the War, when men had a mind to listen to their philosophy 
— whose light wit and satirical humor make all the issues of 
life seem trivial. Sin ceases to be blameworthy, virtue be- 
comes tiresome, nothing is base enough or noble enough to 
be worth getting excited over, to know all is to excuse all, 
and even righteousness appears but moral pasteboard and 
tinsel. If we spend much time in the company of minds of 
this character our moral fiber inevitably relaxes, and all in- 
tensity of conviction or of purpose becomes bourgeois and 
distasteful. 

Obviously such minds are in direct antagonism to Jesus. 
He tried to smite such folly from the minds of men. To 
come from its sophistry into his presence was to come into 
a different atmosphere, as from the languid warmth of a 
hothouse into a keen mountain air. He braces men to face 
a world of realities both terrible and gracious. He suffers 
no man to saunter through it carelessly, shielded by an 
armor of skeptical indififerentism. He bids men follow him, 
sensitively vulnerable by sympathy to the miseries of others, 
and sharing the divine hatred of sin and love of mercy. He 
drives men out of the cultured ease of the Laodicean, and 
precipitates them into rough strife in which one must venture 
all or stand confessed a slacker before God. 

Life was no more a graceful jest to Jesus than it was to a 
Red Cross nurse at a base hospital in France during an 
offensive. He lived at the heart of things, and it is impossible 
but that his words should vibrate with the intensity of one 
stirred to the depths of his being by human need. If we read 
them casually, out of the careless unconcern of a perfect 
day of pleasure, we find them hard to understand. They jar 
upon us as stern and overwrought. But viewing them as 
war-time messages, and having in mind the same realities 
of irrepressible conflict that he saw — a conflict in which 
he was himself being sacrificed — we find them wise and rea- 
sonable and kind. Our first disposition to resist them fades 
away. Even this primary demand for self-denial by his 
followers becomes intelligible. It no longer appears an 
arbitrary exaction, designed to cut down life's pleasures with 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-c] 

a sort of Puritan severity, but a statement of an obvious 
necessity that we cannot wish to shirk. 

In order to play the part in life that God would have us 
play, to be the kind of men that God would have us be, we 
must simply make flat denial of the theory of life that puts 
self-gratification first. Jesus demands that there should be 
a square turning around, a conversion, from the life that puts 
self-will before God's will. All character-building that goes 
on under an intermittent or half-hearted purpose is like 
house-building under two opposing sets of architect's plans — 
only confusion and loss can result 

And so he calls at the outset for a clear-cut decision for 
God, that shall go to the depths of one's soul. He is far 
enough from asking for an extensive wisdom as to himself 
and his purposes, as though these questions must be cleared 
up before any decisive action can be taken. It is as though 
he asked men, already convinced of God's right in them, to 
sign up for God's kingdom and God's righteousness with an 
absolute abandonment, ready to see where this would lead 
them, just as men sign up for national service, ready to 
respond to any assignment the Government sees fit to make. 
Most of us would not only like to have the way left open for 
unlimited discussion and argument as we go along, but to 
have the whole campaign explained to us at the outset, so 
that at any moment we could change our minds. But it is 
as clear as day that Jesus' uncompromising demand on men 
was for an initial act of unselfish allegiance, based on trust 
in God, that should hold good forever. A shifting wobbly 
foundation for long years of life-building was out of the 
question. 

As Donald Hankey puts it, "Religion is betting one's life 
that there is a God." 

Ill 

One cannot even come within sight of the motive for 
genuine Christian living, without leaving behind altogether 
the atmosphere of spiritual bargain-hunting. All the issues 
in view are too great to allow of petty calculations of profit. 
When we come to reflect upon it, there is an austere dignity 
about the teachings of Jesus that is curiously unlike what 
we would expect of one trying to win recruits for a difficult 



[VI-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

enterprise. He makes no promises of gain, he offers no bids 
for followers. He does not say how much they will get who 
obey his commands. He does not even promise them happi- 
ness, or peace, or joy, or love, or salvation. 

If one .will carefully read over the Synoptic Gospels, he is 
likely to be surprised to see how bare they are of any directly 
offered inducements for following Jesus. It is true that 
he points out the blessedness of those with certain qualities 
of character, as in the Beatitudes ; but there is only one 
direct promise of benefit to those who choose him as Master — 
that of rest for the soul. He did say to that first group of 
the disciples that he would make them fishers of men, and 
near the end he spoke enigmatically of the reward that should 
be to those who had left home or family for his sake. But 
there is a majestic dignity of reserve about the whole matter 
of the benefits to be had in his service. The gospels, in the 
bare simplicity of their narrative, are strange documents for 
propaganda. Certainly they record more sayings of Jesus 
that tend to discourage impulsive allegiance than such as 
fan into flames the embers of enthusiasm. 

The fact is that Jesus did not try, like Muhammad, to 
make men covet heaven for its rewards. He was concerned 
first and last with character. As a result, he brought men 
face to face with the great realities of righteousness and the 
great motives for spiritual conquest, and left with them the 
choice, but a choice so irradiated with divine love and for- 
giveness and mercy that it was like an open door of hope. 
He must have made it shiningly clear that the message of the 
Kingdom of God was glad tidings. To enter into it, here 
and now, was to gain the great possessions of the soul. To 
lose one's life for it was to find it. But the whole enter- 
prise and engagement was one of seeking to do the will of 
God and of bringing it to pass in one's life and in the world. 
The unmeasured capacities of the soul found their satisfac- 
tion there. He must always have made men feel, even if he 
did not say it, that peace and joy and life lay behind that 
binding up of the child's will with the Father's. The 
estrangement of sin was done away, and the sunlight of his 
favor- made life glad. And yet, to those frankly worldly 
crowds to whom he spoke, it must have seemed at best an 
austere and unrewarding faith. 

86 



^ 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-c] 

It was in full view of these great realities of the Kingdom 
of God and of the infinite possibilities of a life of fellowship 
with him, that Jesus spoke so plainly of turning one's back 
on self as the first step in the Christian path. He was clear- 
ing the way for the great motives of love and gratitude and 
loyalty to righteousness. They have no chance where self- 
assertion and self-love and self-pity are always blocking the 
road. Our doubts and fears and pains and pleasures are 
frequently enough to use up all the vitality of the spirit and 
leave nothing over. Jesus says, This, is divine business. 
Forget yourself for a little, give me all your heart's loyalty, 
and we will walk together to the end, in the life that over- 
comes. Not the half-gloomy negative of the self-forgetting, 
but the joy and the strength of that divine fellowship is the 
positive, essential feature of the situation. But nothing can 
be more plain than that it is of no use setting out to build a 
character under the direction of Jesus, without a complete 
and far-reaching submission of the soul to him. 

IV 

It is Emerson who said, "Every great and commanding 
movement in the annals of the world is the triumph of some 
enthusiast." One only needs to know life to know how true 
that is. It is the man who loses sight of himself in his job 
who does the great things. Even in civil life today the men 
who are accomplishing the great tasks, whether like Schwab 
or Edison or Hoover, are so devoted to the work they are 
doing that they have no time to be listening for praise or 
blame, or even to preserve an all-round interest in other 
departments than their own. They are enthusiasts. One only 
needs to think of them, and of the need of the world for men 
of fiery intensity today, to realize how ridiculous and con- 
temptible is the attitude of blase indifferentism, of languid 
superiority to vulgar enthusiasms, that has been carefully 
cultivated by a certain type of cultured men, too broad and 
too worldly-wise to be caught in any narrow current of 
impetuous and vehement devotion to any cause or any leader. 

Nowhere is this contrast so clear as in the long struggle 
for the good of humanity, where wrongs and sorrows are so 
pitiful and where the emotions are deeply stirred by sym- 
pathy. What has become of the academic calm in the lives of 



[VI-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

those highly educated men who served for a year or more 
on the Relief Commission in Belgium? Never while they 
live will the flame of pity and indignation cease to burn like 
a fire in their bones, because they have seen -and suffered 
under the sorrows of that outraged people. And the man 
who can come close up to the fortunes of the heavy-laden 
multitude, as Jesus did, and yet hold himself indifferent and 
unmoved in face of their mute appeal, is something less than 
human. But there have been, and still are, millions such in 
Christendom. The Church has at times been choked with 
them. Our universities have too often been their breeding- 
ground. Right and wrong, sin and sorrow and joy, degra- 
dation and deliverance, as forces ever working among the 
people, have only feebly stirred their interest in comparison 
with business and society, with art and literature and science. 

But Jesus ! How completely he surrendered himself to the 
tides of divine sympathy that surged up in him ! How 
gloriously he championed the right and threw him^self 
against the wrong! Plow passionately he gave himself and 
all he had to the cause of God, here among the homes of 
men! To look at him, to catch one glimpse of his spirit, 
is to understand that saying of Lincoln's, "The only ground 
between right and wrong is battle-ground." Only to come 
within the outermost circle of Jesus' influence is to feel 
oneself being drawn into the good fight. All pretense of in- 
difference or languidness or superiority becomes odious, in- 
tolerable. We are his partisans ! We cleave to him ! We 
only ask that his will may be done in us, and that we may 
manfully serve his cause on earth. 

And yet so witty and wise a clergyman as Sydney Smith 
wrote, "The Gospel has no enthusiasms." To him, as to 
multitudes of churchmen in his time, it had not. It was a 
way of virtue and respectability for respectable people, and 
anything that savored of enthusiasm — whether it was Meth- 
odism, or missions, or aggressive evangelism of any sort — 
was vulgar and objectionable. But that spirit of conven- 
tional moderation and propriety, bled white of any red drops 
of passionate devotion, made his age one of a sterile selfish- 
ness that we blush to remember. 

A singular leader Jesus was for so prudent a gentleman as 
Sydney Smith, or for men and women in our time who 



INTENSITY OF PURPOSE [VI-c] 

would make use of Jesus, as they would make use of Con- 
fucius or of Plato, only so far as to feel the ethical uplift 
of his teachings. It is impossible to make any sympathetic 
study of the commands of Jesus without seeing that he asks 
for something more, something that it searches the very soul 
to give, a completeness of surrender to his spirit that would 
attach his followers to himself by bands so strong as to out- 
last life. 



When in i860 Garibaldi, with his legion of a thousand 
red-shirted followers, descended like a thunderbolt on Sicily, 
he scattered like chaff the armies that were opposed to him. 
The whole world wondered to see that little band sweep 
through Sicily and up the coast of Italy, putting to flight 
armies of ten and twenty and even forty thousand men, until 
the menace of his name was sufficient to spread terror in any 
force that could be brought against him. And the reason 
for it was obvious enough. He had so welded together that 
company in the flame of a fiery, unquenchable loyalty and 
devotion, that he could wield them like a single blade of 
steel and none could stand before their dauntless enthusiasm. 

Jesus came into the world for a purpose to be achieved in 
the face of tremendous odds, a purpose lying as clear-cut 
athwart the worldly aims of men as the path of a searchlight 
across the night. And the followers he drew to himself 
he called under terms that were agreeable to such an enter- 
prise. They were fused together in the fires of his own spirit, 
like Garibaldi's legion, to be wielded like a tried weapon for 
God's uses in the world. There was simply no place in his 
company for the dilettante or the trifler. It is a good thing 
for a merchant to be a dilettante in art ; it is a graceful 
enrichment and decoration of an otherwise prosaic life. But 
to be a dilettante Christian, a dabbler in the teachings of 
Jesus, is somehow a contradiction in terms. It is a stark 
incongruity. 

All these passages for the week, laying bare the soul of 
Jesus in the quivering earnestness of his appeals to men, 
compel the conclusion that he asked for all or nothing. He 
did not ask that they should suddenly become saints or 
theologians, but that they should utterly yield themselves to 

89 



[VI-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

him. as those young Italians yielded themselves to Gari- 
baldi, in a personal loyalty and obedience that exulted in 
the sacrifice. They were very human and very unsatisfactory 
in many ways ; but at this one point, of unselfish devotion 
to their cause and leader, they were honest and faithful 
altogether. 

The closer one comes to the personality of Jesus, the more 
does one recognize that character-building under his leader- 
ship involves this complete, decisive identification of oneself 
with him and with his cause. It would be agreeable in certain 
moods if we could shade off his requirements into such easier 
terms as permit a partial or tentative acceptance. But it is 
of no use discussing such a matter ; in the plainest terms 
he repudiated all halfway agreements. There is something 
in the nature of the case that makes such compromise un- 
thinkable. 

Paul has stated the case fairly, as it appealed to him and 
as it affects any life today, "One thing I do, forgetting the 
things which are behind, and stretching forward to the things 
which are before, I press on toward the goal unto the prize 
of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus." Under the influ- 
ence of Jesus he found himself becoming a man of one idea 
— to realize God's calling. In spite of the world, the flesh, 
and the devil, in spite of failure and perplexity, and times of 
spiritual darkness, he would reach the end that God had set 
before him — to make of himself all that God could make 
out of a human soul, both in its own development and in the 
service of men. There is no use in setting any other limit 
to the gains of character than this — that we should realize 
all of which our nature gives any promise, in its best and 
deepest intimations of divine capacities. So great a thing 
it is to be a Christian. 



90 



CHAPTER VII 

The Lowliness of Service 



DAILY READINGS 

On one of those rare occasions when Jesus held the mirror 
up to his own character, he said of himself, "Learn of me, 
for I am meek and lowly in heart." At another time he said, 
to the same purpose, "I am among you as he that serveth." 
Regarded from any point of view, these are extraordinary 
utterances for one who called himself Master and Lord. 
They emphasize a quality of character which, in that old 
hard world, had seldom been regarded, as princely. The 
pagan world would have termed it, as Nietzsche did in our 
day, a morality for slaves. But view it as we may, Jesus 
evidently regarded it as divine. It is conspicuously charac- 
teristic of his temper and teaching. It is inseparably inter- 
wrought with his ideal for human life, so much so that men 
have always recognized gentleness of spirit as a distinctive 
mark of his real followers. 

The ideal has been egregiously travestied and set at nought 
by those who bore his name, but it must always remain 
inseparable from any genuine Christian character. It has 
never seemed so divine as it does now, when the want of 
it on the part of his professed Church has plunged the world 
in mourning. The men and women of this generation, whose 
it is to bring the peace of Christ's kingdom on earth as 
never before, must learn well this lesson of their Master 
if they would draw men after him. The readings for this 
week all have to do with this general topic. 

Seventh Week, First Day 

Blessed are the poor in spirit: for theirs is the kingdom 
of heaven. 

91 



[VII-i] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be com- 
forted. 

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth. 

Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after righteous- 
ness: for they shall be filled. 

Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. 

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 

Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be called 
sons of God. 

Blessed are they that have been persecuted for right- 
eousness' sake: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. — 
Matt. 5:3-10. 

These are undoubted sayings of Jesus. Who but he could 
ever have uttered words so unworldly, so revolutionary, so 
intensely spiritual in - their outlook? They represent his 
surest convictions as to human life and character. Chris- 
tianity can no more forget or disparage these character 
specifications than a finished building could deny the archi- 
tect's plans on which it was erected. One may frankly wish 
for a more martial religion — for the ideals of Thor or Odin 
— and may turn away in belief and practice from a cult of 
meekness, lowliness, and gentleness of spirit. But to do so 
is to discard Christianity. The orthodox creeds of Christen- 
dom are mere sounding brass, signifying nothing, if dis- 
severed from these moral qualities. For better or for worse, 
Christianity must stand by its Founder here or retire from 
the stage. 

And here its Founder stands, saying. Blessed are the poor 
in spirit, the meek, the peacemakers. We may be in a little 
doubt at first as to just what he means by the meek and 
poor in spirit. But we can fairly understand them, from their 
opposites — the proud, the arrogant, the domineering. From 
all such, good Lord deliver us, and deliver our tormented 
world ! Jesus wished to deliver men from the corrosive 
irritant of pride, that dissolves society and allows no social 
wound to heal. And what he manifestly asked for was that 
his followers should be as far as possible like him : not poor- 
spirited, not abject or cringing — all true orders of nobility 
have their source in his gallant spirit — but that they should 
be like forgiven children of their Father. He would have 
them humble, for their own failures; lowly of heart, as 

92 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-2] 

living in the family of God; gentle, with the gentleness of 
true privilege and conscious strength. Not like Napoleon, 
but like Lincoln, as Lincoln became when he had to bear the 
sorrows of many and drew near his Lord to find the needed 
i strength. 

ij Only the actual companionship of Jesus is likely to make 

ii us find our happiness in a temper like his own; to follow 
him is to find what would otherwise be a closed way. 

I 

I Seventh Week, Second Day 

But all their works they do to be seen of men: for 

I they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the 

j borders of their garments, and love the chief place at 

' feasts, and the chief seats in the synagogues, and the 

salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called of men, 

Rabbi. But be not ye called Rabbi: for one is your 

teacher, and all ye are brethren. And call no man your 

father on the earth: for one is your Father, even he who 

is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is 

your master, even the Christ. But he that is greatest 

among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall 

exalt himself shall be humbled; and whosoever shall 

humble himself shall be exalted. — Matt. 23:5-12. 

The saying of this last verse was apparently often on the 
lips of Jesus. It is one of his most characteristic utterances. 
We see through it, as through a window, into his own charac- 
ter ; and even more surely we see what he demands of those 
who would build the structure of their life after his direc- 
tion. How the Church would have leaped forward into the 
confidence and affection of men if it had fought for this 
truth as it has fought, for example, for the doctrine of the 
eucharist! And in these years now just upon us there will 
be the sorest need for men and women in whose lives this 
principle has taken on commanding force. 

It is only human nature for us to long to get ahead, to 
get above our fellows, to rise by them and upon them. There 
is a subtle delight in feeling ourselves superior to those 
about us, in having praise and honor at their hands, and being 
compassed with obsequious attention. We love power and 
influence, love to have men defer to our superior authority 
or intelligence. Alere wealth is intoxicating for this very 

93 



IVII-3] BUILDING ON ROCK 

reason, that it lifts men up above the common crowd, until 
the sweet incense of respectful observance is always in their 
nostrils. Much of society, as we know it, is pushing along 
these lines just as it was in Jesus' day, and men are still 
selfish and unjust and cruel in their pride and lust of power. 

And here Jesus interposes this earnest teaching, so repug- 
nant to human nature, so unworldly, but trailing clouds of 
glory from the presence of God. It is a bogus greatness that 
one builds up by pushing and elbowing past his fellows, 
thanks to his superior advantages and endowments. It leads 
in the end to humiliation. The only true greatness is the 
order of God's nobility, and this is built on humble considera- 
tion for the legitimate ambitions of others as well as our 



Seventh Week, Third Day 

In that hour came the disciples unto Jesus, saying, 
Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven? And 
he called to him a little child, and set him in the midst 
of them, and said. Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn, 
and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter 
into the kingdom of heaven. Whosoever therefore shall 
humble himself as this little child, the same is the greatest 
in the kingdom of heaven. And whoso shall receive one 
such little child in my name receiveth me. — Matt. i8: 1-5. 

There was something about children that appealed irre- 
sistibly to Jesus. He had grown up in the intimacies of a 
poor home, overrun with little ones. As the oldest brother 
of James and Joseph and Simon and Judas and their sisters, 
he must have cared for the ranks of the toddlers through 
endless days. He had no illusions as to what childhood was, 
and no airy sentiments about its perfections. And yet when 
all men were suspicious of him, the children loved him, and 
in this unfriendly world they were his friends always. He 
saw in them qualities that he coveted for his disciples, quali- 
ties, indeed, that were indispensable if they were to be 
strong men after his own heart. 

What was it he saw in childhood that made him say to the 
chosen circle of his friends that their only chance of honor 
with God was in becoming like the little one in his arms? Of 
course the child was immature and incomplete in every way, 

94 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-4] 

untested and unsure by the side of those weather-beaten men 
who had already fought through numberless temptations. 
But one thing a child has, which is just what Jesus longed 
to see in those grown men. He is unspoiled .by the vainglory 
of life. He is still so humble that he claims nothing for 
himself of deference and consideration. His loyal affection 
takes no heed of rank or place or dignity. He clings to a 
mother dressed in rags as eagerly as he would to a queen 
of fashion who could pave his path through life with luxuries. 
He loves without calculation, and lives by simple confidence 
in those who love him. No kind of service is below his 
dignity, pride has not yet laid his first generous impulses in 
irons. 

This, at least, we can pray for earnestly for ourselves, 
that we may grow more childlike with the years, set free 
from pride and the thirst for the glory of men, and un- 
ashamed to serve in humble ways. 

Seventh Week, Fourth Day 

And they were bringing unto him little children, that 
he should touch them: and the disciples rebuked them. 
But when Jesus saw it, he was moved with indignation, 
and said unto them, Suffer the little children to come 
unto me; forbid them not: for to such belongeth the 
^ kingdom of God. Verily I say unto you. Whosoever shall 
not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall 
in no wise enter therein. And he took them in his arms, 
and blessed them, laying his hands upon them. — Mark 
10: 13-16. 

It was the stern scholar Jonathan Edwards who prayed 
"that he might be led as a little child through the wilderness 
of this world." And this gentle childlike spirit we recognize 
as perhaps the noblest element in his somber character. Poor 
old Thomas Carlyle ! If only children could have had 
access to his life to shatter his pompous solemnities and 
break up the glacial crust that overlay his real tenderness 
of heart ! But he was too much like Peter and John, and 
many things were hidden from him in consequence. 

If it had only been a group of supercilious scholars from 
Jerusalem who had condescendingly asked to speak with 
Jesus, Peter would have compassed them with attentions. 

95 



[VII-5] BUILDING ON ROCK 

But that mothers should bring their babies to break in on 
high discourse was too ridiculous for words. What had 
children to do with the greatest rabbi of his time, or with 
the councils of grave men? Yet, to the mortified surprise 
of the disciples, Jesus openly avowed a sympathy with the 
children and the child spirit that was enough to shake confi- 
dence in his judgment on the part of all the learned of his 
nation. 

Why did he say that the Kingdom of God was made up 
of childlike hearts, rather than of the wise and understand- 
ing? Because the unspoiled natures of children have the 
truer wisdom in their confiding trust in love. A child is 
always ready to be forgiven, to be comforted, to accept fresh 
kindness, to lean on others' strength and wisdom — neither 
pride nor suspicion have robbed it of its natural trust in 
response to pure aflfection. As we grow sophisticated and 
self-sufficient, with our tiny acquirement of learning and 
experience, we tend to harden into an unfilial stiffness toward 
our Heavenly Father. If we definitely disbelieved in him, 
discarding as unfounded the faith of Jesus, that would be 
another matter. But quite without such disbelief we seem to 
grow too proud to rest upon God's love. We grow cold and 
distant and formal, we fear to venture much upon the chance 
of his good will, we make ridiculous pretense of earning what 
we receive, we become artificial and ceremonious and sus- 
picious of having given offense, we doubt at times if he is 
much of a Father after all — in a word, we drop the childlike 
relation almost altogether and drift away, out of sight o.f its 
joyous, simple trust in a reasonable but un fathomed love, 
till we lose all human touch with the God and Father of oun 
Lord Jesus Christ. 

May our eyes he opened to understand what his Father 
meant to Jesus, and how we, too, may live with him con- 
fidingly as children, every day. 

Seventh Week, Fifth Day 

And he spake also this parable unto certain who trusted 
in themselves that they were righteous, and set all others 
at nought: Two men went up into the temple to pray; 
the one a Pharisee, and the other a publican. The 

96 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE IVII-5] 

Pharisee stood and prayed thus with himself, God, I 
thank thee, that I am not as the rest of men, extortioners, 
unjust, adulterers, or even as this publican. I fast twice 
in the week; I give tithes of all that I get. But the publi- 
can, standing afar off, would not lift up so much as his 
eyes unto heaven, but smote his breast, saying, God, be 
thou merciful to me a sinner. I say unto you, This man 
went down to his house justified rather than the other: 
for every one that exalteth himself shall be humbled; but 
he that humbleth himself shall be exalted. — Luke 18:9-14. 

No doubt there is a warm satisfaction in being as well 
pleased with oneself as the Pharisee was. It gives men an 
easy title to lord it over their inferiors, when they are so 
obviously their betters. The so-called upper classes have 
rested pleasantly in these manifest rights and prerogatives 
for many generations. Their complacency has seemed to 
them only a reasonable recognition of the undoubted facts 
of life. If God has made them wise and virtuous and respect- 
able, what else could they do but exalt themselves over those 
who were ignorant and careless and debased? Their very 
superiority carried with it the manifest right to rule, and 
incidentally to enjoy all of life's good things, earned for them 
so largely by the labors of the poor. 

Jesus viewed the matter from a curiously different point 
of view, both morally and economically, that enraged the 
intellectuals of his time. He saw that this complacent atti- 
tude of superiority did something else for the privileged few 
besides yielding them honor from men : it shut up their 
hearts to the grace of God. Humility means receptivity, 
means that one's heart is open to God — wide open to his 
forgiveness and his mercy. The sense of need is necessary 
if God is to have a chance to enrich one's life with the true 
riches. And the same sense of need and humility and child- 
like gratitude that makes one responsive to God, makes one 
considerate and gentle toward men. The poor fellow who 
said, "God be merciful to me a sinner," and who went away 
with something about him of the awe of divine forgiveness 
and comfort, could hardly after that be proud and overbearing 
with his neighbor. 

To humble ourselves before God in sorrow for our failure 
and ill-desert J is to make it possible for him to deliver, us 

97 



[VII-6] BUILDING ON ROCK 

from evil and lift us up by the great, silent energies of holy 
love. 

Seventh Week, Sixth Day 

Then came to him the mother of the sons of Zebedee 
with her sons, worshipping him, and asking a certain 
thing of him. And he said unto her. What wouldest 
thou? She saith unto him, Command that these my two 
sons may sit, one on thy right hand, and one on thy left 
hand, in thy kingdom. But Jesus answered and said. Ye 
know not what ye ask. Are ye able to drink the cup that 
I am about to drink? They say unto him, We are able. 
He saith unto them, My cup indeed ye shall drink: but 
to sit on my right hand, and on my left hand, is not mine 
to give; but it is for them for whom it hath been pre- 
pared of my Father. And when the ten heard it, they 
were moved with indignation concerning the two breth- 
ren. But Jesus called them unto him, and said. Ye know 
that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and 
their great ones exercise authority over them. Not so 
shall it be among you: but whosoever would become 
great among you shall be your minister; and whosoever 
would be first among you shall be your servant: even 
as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but 
to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many. — 
Matt. 20:20-28. 

It was not lowliness for its own sake only that Jesus wished 
to establish in the characters of his disciples, but for the sake 
of its fruitfulness in the new Kingdom of God. Pride is 
anti-social, in Jesus' time or in ours. It separates a man from 
his fellows, and loosens all the ties of brotherhood. Humility 
draws men together in mutual sympathy and helpfulness. 
How we love to exercise authority, to have others work 
under us and do our will ! From the section-boss on the 
railroad to the captain of industry, or the prime-minister 
of a government, rich and poor alike covet the chance to get 
above their fellows. And it is this endless ambition for the 
sweets of authority that is one of the most obvious disinte- 
grating forces in society, among men or nations. 

James and John quite broke up the peace of their little 
circle, in the eagerness to get ahead of their companions. 
They were only following the natural impulse to look after 

98 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-7] 

oneself first. But it is an impulse that embitters human life. 
It is human enough, everybody knows. But that is the 
trouble — it is too human. It is not enough like God. 

Jesus showed them what was divine, what alone was Chris- 
tian : to forget their itching love of praise and power, in 
honest thoughtfulness for their companions. Sympathy for 
others.' needs was to beget a real ministry of love. We have 
talked about this principle in recent years with such a Niagara 
of words that one almost fears to speak of it, lest it seem 
a platitude. Yet it is still a principle so novel, so difficult, 
so wondrously beautiful, that only actual fellowship with 
God can make it at all prevailing in our lives or in society. 

This is what the Church needs above all else — not so much 
to adopt and proclaim a new social gospel, as to draw near 
enough to its Master to have the mind of Christ, which will 
indeed make his Gospel seem like new. 

Seventh Week, Seventh Day 

Now before the feast of the passover, Jcsus knowing 
that his hour was come that he should depart out of this 
world unto the Father, having loved his own that were 
in the world, he loved them unto the end. And during 
supper, the devil having already put into the heart of 
Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, Jesus, know- 
ing that the Father had given all things into his hands, 
and that he came forth from God, and goeth unto God, 
riseth from supper, and laycth aside his garments; and 
he took a towel, and girded himself. Then he poureth 
water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples' 
feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was 
girded. . . . 

So when he had washed their feet, and taken his gar- 
ments, and sat down again, he said unto them, Know ye 
what I have done to you? Ye call me, Teacher, and, 
Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, the Lord 
and the Teacher, have washed your feet, ye also ought 
to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an 
example, that ye also should do as I have done to you. — 
John 13: 1-5, 12-15. 

A lowly spirit is good even as an abstract ideal, but when 
made visible in human life it is an honorable distinction. To 
see in the life of a strong man this humble readiness to serve 

99 



[VII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

in lowly and self-forgetting ways, is irresistibly attractive 
and persuasive. Anyone of us is ready to stand on his dignity 
and let others do the serving. There is nothing uncommon 
about that, and nothing attractive. There were strong men 
in Lincoln's cabinet who knew their worth, every whit of it, 
and insisted on the fullest measure of deference from all 
who approached them. They were aristocrats, and allowed 
none to forget it. But how the world loves Lincoln, as it 
is coming to know him, who could so forget his dignity and 
his just rights as to disregard utterly the envy and prejudice 
of those about him, if only he could better serve the people. 
It was the same spirit in General Lee which made him be- 
loved by all who knew him. 

And how winsomely strength and meekness were blended 
in the character of Jesus. Here was this matter of the foot- 
washing, a menial office that had to be performed by some- 
one before they began the feast. Of course it could not be 
expected of John, the beloved disciple. Peter was above it 
altogether. The less prominent disciples could not afford to 
lower themselves by admitting that it was suitable for them. 
Only one was great enough, and sure enough of his position, 
to act the servant among them. But Jesus was divine enough 
to kneel at the feet of each, with basin and towel like a 
slave, while they looked uneasily at each other and at him. 
Like society leaders from the newly rich, they were too 
insecure in their position to derogate anything of their full 
dignity or to compromise their standing by any humble 
unconventionality, however useful. 

Jesus would have us so sure of ourselves as sons of God 
that we shall be free, as he was, to serve in any way that 
we are needed, fearing no loss of caste or honor. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

Somewhere along the road of any detailed discussion of 
the words of Jesus, it is necessary to turn aside for a moment 
to speak of his Oriental habit in the use of language. He 
was a Syrian, with Syrian habits of thought and speech, and 
just as the Syrian of today is widely different from the 

100 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-c] 

American in his way of expressing himself, so we must make 
allowance in the sayings of Jesus for similar divergencies 
from Western usage. Not to do so is to misunderstand him 
at many points. It is to lose sight of the spirit in the letter ; 
and the Western literalist dealing with Oriental imagery, even 
with the most pious of intentions, is at sea indeed. 

The Syrian-born Abraham Rihbany, now of Boston, has 
made this abundantly plain in his book, "The Syrian Christ." 
He points out that "just as the Oriental loves to flavor his 
food strongly and to dress in bright colors, so is he fond 
of metaphor, exaggeration, and positiveness in speech. To 
him, mild accuracy is weakness. It is because he loves to 
speak in pictures and to subordinate literal accuracy to the 
total impression of an utterance, that he makes such extensive 
use of figurative language." It needs no argument to show 
that the language of Jesus in many places is chosen to leave 
a vivid impression rather than to state a literal fact or lay 
down the precise form of a command. He was enforcing 
a truth with impassioned earnestness, but we must look for 
the truth behind the metaphor — not in the specific wording 
of the utterance, or the manifest exaggeration of his hyper- 
bole. 

To do this is not to dilute the force of his utterances, but 
simply to understand his meaning ; as, for example, in his 
saying that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of 
a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God. 
There is no more sense in trying somehow to explain this 
literally than in taking literally his description of the Phari- 
sees as straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel. " His 
meaning is clear in either case, but it is not the surface 
meaning of the words. We can see this clearly also in his 
injunction, "If thy right eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck 
it out, and cast it from thee." The lustful thought would 
not be so easily cast out, even if both one's eye-sockets were 
empty; and it is not self-mutilation that Jesus is advising. 

In the readings for this week we have the bidding, "Call 
no man your father on the earth; for one is your Father, 
even he who is in heaven." It cannot be his purpose to forbid 
a child's calling his father, ''Father," or a servant's speaking 
of his master. He is putting vividly and forcefully the warn- 
ing against ministering to pride by adulation and the heaping 

lOI 



[VII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

up of titles. We remember how he said that unless a man 
hated his father and mother and even his own life, he could 
not be his disciple. No Occidental would ever have made 
that statement, and to his first thought it is repellent. To a 
Syrian its meaning is obvious, as the superlative demand for 
loyalty to the Master, above all competing demands that 
could possibly conflict. 

Of the same sort is the bidding, "Whosoever smiteth thee 
on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also," and other 
commands associated with it, forbidding resistance to evil. 
Taken literally, they present a course not only anti-social — 
hurtful to the interests of others — but inconsistent with any 
wise love or constructive benevolence. We must interpret 
them as honestly as we can in harmony with Jesus' unmis- 
takable teaching and example exhibited elsewhere. At every 
stage of New Testament interpretation this principle must 
be kept in mind. 

Some will be inclined to say. Is there not in this a danger 
of refining away our Lord's words and so evading their real 
significance? Certainly there is a danger, as in all honest 
independent use of our own' judgment. We may possibly 
make mistakes of interpretation. But in the other case, there 
is not only a possibility but a certainty that we shall go 
wrong. And so we have no choice but to think for ourselves 
what our Lord really meant. Literalism is not for honest 
people, but for the timid and indolent and careless. And if 
it be objected further that if we once begin such critical 
treatment of Jesus' sayings we shall not know where to stop, 
we can only answer that this in a measure is true, but that 
the danger is inseparable from honest search for truth any- 
where along the line. If we are to keep to sharply drawn 
limits within which no error is possible, it can only be by 
leaning on the authority of others in the acceptance of tradi- 
tion. There is in these days no way to save ourselves the 
trouble of thinking or the responsibility for decision, if we 
are to be honest seekers for the mind of Christ. 

II 

The Christian religion can never break away from its 
humble origins, though it has often tried to do so. Its ideals 
of life and character can never travel far from him who was 

102 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-c] 

meek and lowly in heart. This is not so much because he 

was born, in a stable or executed as a criminal. Both of 

I these things can be so softened by sentiment as to be com- 

ji paratively unobjectionable, even to the proud and masterful. 

I But it is not so easy to get away from the fact that his 

i| hands were calloused by the common labor of a workingman, 

I that the only home he ever knew was the crowded peasant 

cottage of the poor, noisy with children and without con- 

! venience or privacy, and that he was derided and despised 

even in his own day as one who never had the gentleman's 

training of the schools. 

His lowliness of temper showed itself further, as he came 
to the place where his powerful gifts and his popularity 
enabled him to choose any social backing he preferred. In- 
stead of selecting for his friends men who would have 
brought him the prestige or worldly standing that he lacked, 
he picked out those who relentlessly held him down to the 
humble level whence he sprang — fishermen, peasants, publi- 
cans — men of the common people. He deliberately consorted, 
not with the religious or scholarly circles of his time, as he 
might have done, but with the despised mass of the poor 
and ignorant and even the "undesirable citizens" of that day. 
His tastes led him to pay much attention to those who could 
bring no sort of help to the movement he was trying to 
found — children and women and sick, even lepers and beggars 
and obvious outcasts. He went out of his way to show that 
he had more sympathy for humble and penitent wastrels, 
broken by life's hardships, than he had for those who proudly 
knew themselves to be the pillars of Judaism. He seemed 
to take with utmost seriousness such an Old Testament saying 
as that which declared of the high and lofty One that in- 
habiteth eternity, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with 
him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit, to revive 
the spirit of the humble, and to revive the heart of the 
contrite." 

In this respect his life was all of a piece throughout, from 
his cradle among the cattle to the grave hastily opened in 
charity to hide the dishonored body. And all his teaching 
was such as might be expected from one who chose for 
himself, at his Father's will, such lowly conditions as were 
representative of the vast mass of humanity. If any man 

T03 



[VII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

chooses to shape his life after the ideals of Jesus, from now 
to the end of time he will have to choose a life that rather 
forgets itself for the good of others than seeks to be refined 
and enriched at their expense. It may be a life of leadership, 
possibly of power and authority among the people ; but even 
in the place of privilege the servant will aim to be like his 
Master, and this will make him still the beloved servant of 
men. All his life will be infiltrated by the love of God, and 
this will make him loving and gentle in his turn, hating 
arrogance and fearing the insidious poison of self-sufficiency 
and pride. 

Ill 

It has always been a grievance with some that Jesus did 
not lay greater stress on the more masculine and self-assertive 
virtues — courage, firmness, gallantry, and other qualities de- 
noting energy and leadership. It may be said in answer that 
Jesus emphasized what needed to be emphasized with those 
to whom he spoke. It would have been another matter if 
he had been addressing a people of gentler nature, like the 
Burmese or the Hawaiians. But the Jews were a truculent 
people, good haters, fierce and vindictive, trained to despise 
all others as inferiors. The other races of his time were 
little better. The Greeks and Romans at the height of their 
culture were exquisitely selfish and cruelly contemptuous of 
the unfortunate. The barbarians were frankly barbaric. No 
wonder that even the personal disciples of Jesus quarreled 
for preeminence. It was in the air they breathed. So it was 
a new principle that Jesus introduced into the moral atmos- 
phere, and, although men have been breathing it for nineteen 
centuries, still it is a strange teaching. 

How abruptly it runs athwart the principle of development, 
as it' has been working these unknown ages in animal life in 
the struggle for existence 1 All about us creatures rise by 
the assertion of strength at the expense of their fellows, and 
even in us men the animal struggles fiercely to do the same. 
As Huxley said, the whole course of organic evolution has 
no ethical suggestion "except that man must try to go on 
the opposite tack." We are beginning to see very clearly in 
these days that men must go on the opposite tack indeed, if 
society is ever to be delivered from peril of destruction. But 

104 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-c] 

Jesus emphasized it to those fiercely proud fellow-countrymen 
of his, so long ago. After the tide of human life had set 
persistently for millenniums in a contrary direction, he de- 
clared that to spend and be spent for others was the highest 
success in life. In his own career he showed how one who 
was meek and lowly in heart might achieve a world leader- 
ship, by the side of which the power of imperial Rome sank 
away into insignificance. 

IV 

Men have not realized how vital an element this principle 
is in the Christian religion. Correct belief has bulked so 
largely in their thought, that gentleness of heart and lowliness 
of mind have sometimes been almost lost from sight. Yet 
they are vital to the character commended by Jesus. Not 
many years were needed to show how vital a principle of 
life it was, mighty to the casting down of strongholds. In- 
fluential men might ridicule it, then as now ; but it was the 
real thing in the Christian religion, not the only real thing, 
but real with the fundamental reality and power of goodness. 

Jesus meant what he said. His morality, his religion, could 
only live and grow on lines like these. As it became rich 
and strong and proud and domineering it began to fail and 
tade, even though its head called himself the servant of the 
servants of God. And equally have the years shown that 
by spending itself the Church of Christ has increased. The 
bush burns but it is not consumed. The martyrs perish, in 
Rome or Uganda or Shansi, and the seed springs up and 
grows a hundredfold. 

In early Rome the senators and patricians drove in their 
chariots along the streets — proud, powerful, supreme — they 
and their beautiful womenkind, the conscious rulers of the 
world. Beneath their feet, underground in the dark, almost 
within sound of the rumble of their chariot wheels, were the 
little rabble of the Christians, slaves and runaways and re- 
formed outcasts, Jews and Africans and barbarians, worn, 
haggard men and women whom Rome spurned. But patrician 
Rome in its power and purple is now only a matter for anti- 
quarian research, and the despised company of the Catacombs 
holds the world's future in its hands, because of the imperish- 
able vitality of humble love that ministers and serves and 

105 



[VII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

spends Itself, and leaves the result to God. It is Jesus who 
points out the way to greatness for the men of today, and 
not the would-be superman. 



In the very nature of the moral world there is a necessity 
for this requirement in Christian discipleship. It is not a 
novel principle, emphasized and exploited by Jesus, but un- 
related to the eternal and unchanging realities of the moral 
universe. It roots itself in and flowers out of one central 
fact, from which it is inseparable, and Jesus clearly so related 
it when he used the words, "even as the Son of Man came 
not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his 
life a ransom for many." This central fact is, that God is 
like that. The eternal reality is a reality of redeeming love, 
spending itself to save. This was the constructive conviction 
of Jesus' life. If men are to be in harmony with it, they, 
too, must come into the same fellowship of self-forgetting 
helpfulness. It was God who was in Christ giving himself 
to human need. Apart from this truth, the infinite value j 
and dynamic of this principle fade away. 

Who was this Jesus who gives the world these new strange 
lessons in character, illustrating them by his own life and 
death? If he was only another martyr in the dark, going 
willingly to execution rather than deny what he supposed to 
be the truth, then he was only another witness to the appall- 
ing helplessness of man to save himself and his fellows from 
the dominating cruelty of successful force. But if the eternal 
God chose this way to reveal himself, to show the incredible 
reality of his love for men in need, and if Jesus knew that 
God's truth and love were in him to conquer sin and deliver 
men, then we know where we are in the universe — that 
neither death nor hell can prevail against us, because God 
is for us ; and that love and only love is the conquering power 
that in the end shall subdue all things to itself. 

Because Jesus Christ made himself of no reputation and 
gave himself for men, he that would be great must needs 
come into the succession of the sons of God and truly live 
as a servant of men. It is the necessity of an eternal law 
of life, manifesting itself in the life and death of Jesus, 
because it expresses the eternal reality of our Father. These 

1 06 



THE LOWLINESS OF SERVICE [VII-c] 

are great words and would indeed be unpardonably pre- 
sumptuous, except that they are the foundation on which 
the life of our Lord arose. 

Outside the radius of this fact — the self -giving of Jesus — 
this great principle of lowly service slowly withers and dies, 
as it dies in India or China or Germany today, outside the 
personal rule and fellowship of Jesus. Men do not long live 
this life of service apart from their Lord and Saviour. They 
may struggle on awhile, by strength of inherited impulse ; 
but either their efforts to serve will bring them inevitably 
to him, the Great Servant, or the life will wither and die 
away, in one generation or in two. If we are to live the 
Christ life, of which all agree to speak so well, we must 
do it as he did, with heart wide open to our Father's love. 
As the Father's mercy cheers our lives from day to day, we 
shall be able to carry on his mercy to our fellows. 



107 



CHAPTER VIII 

Evils That Lay Waste Life 

DAILY READINGS 

We have no ordered treatise on ethics from the lips of 
Jesus. The evils that lay waste character and rob life of its 
beauty and joy are nowhere dealt with by him in detail 
one by one. But several of them he singled out for special 
reprobation, because of their hurtfulness and all but universal 
prevalence. They may not be what we would first have 
thought of ; but any character patterned after Jesus will 
have need to give serious and prayerful heed to his warning, 
lest it be entangled by the deceitfulness of these evils. Three 
of these are considered in the readings for this week — 
anxiety, covetousness, and impurity. The first may not seem 
to be on a par with the others in its hurtfulness, but only 
one who has lived past middle age can have any idea how 
heavily its blight lies on the later years of life, or how it 
makes havoc of the victorious life of the spirit. 

Eighth Week, First Day 

No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate 
the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, 
and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mam- 
mon. Therefore I say unto you, Be not anxious for your 
life, what ye shall eat, or what ye shall drink; nor yet 
for your body, what ye shall put on. Is not the life more 
than the food, and the body than the raiment? ... Be 
not therefore anxious, saying. What shall we eat? or. 
What shall we drink? or, Wherewithal shall we be 
clothed? For after all these things do the Gentiles seek; 
for your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have need 
of all these things. But seek ye first his kingdom, and 
his righteousness; and all these things shall be added 

io8 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-i] 

unto you. Be not therefore anxious for the morrow: 
for the morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto 
the day is the evil thereof. — Matt. 6:24, 25, 31-34- 

Perhaps we all begin by regarding these verses about 
anxiety as furnishing good advice rather than an imperative 
command. The matter seems somehow too incidental and 
unimportant to be put on the same footing with the graver 
moral and religious duties that are treated before and after 
it. But as years pass, we come to see that this is no inci- 
dental or unimportant matter ; but that Jesus, with his sym- 
pathetic knowledge of the lives of men, was warning them 
against a danger as real and hurtful as hatred or hypocrisy. 
Indeed, for most of us, this command, "'Be not anxious," 
is of more consequence than the two solemn enactments of 
the law, "Thou shalt not kill," and "Thou shalt not steal." 
Heredity and training and convention all combine to shield 
us from temptation to these latter. But what save our own 
enlightened will shall keep us from devastating our powers 
by preoccupation with coming needs and troubles? Just as 
fear paralyzes bodily functions, so it paralyzes the noblest 
powers of the soul. Fear of poverty, of ill-health, of loneli- 
ness, of temptation, of failure in a hundred forms — it not 
only darkens the blue sky that should be above us, but filches 
from us our power of helping in God's kingdom bravely and 
strongly as we ought to help. Depressed and self-absorbed, 
we rob others of the contribution we well might make to the 
common welfare and joy. 

The purpose of Jesus was not simply to set the lives of his 
disciples free from a heavy shadow and burden. Certainly 
he had that purpose. No Christian Scientist of today is more 
in earnest than was he to bring men into the freedom and 
joyousness of an unclouded peace. But the connection shows 
that Jesus was thinking of the Kingdom of God and its 
long fight against the serried forces of evil. He longed to 
set men free from self-absorbed preoccupation with personal 
worries, for whole-hearted efficiency in God's service. No 
man can serve two masters, he said. H worry over material 
comforts is to stay with us day and night, or secret fear of 
coming sorrow, then it is of little use that we shall be for 
God's purposes. We spoil not only our own joy, but any 

109 



[VIII-2] BUILDING ON ROCK 

first-rate contribution we might have made to the new king- 
dom of righteousness and joy and peace among men. 

O Lord, grant us thy peace. Teach us how to fight a good 
fight against the inroads of care and anxiety, of fear and 
self-pity and depression, and give us the joy of victory all 
along the way until life's end. 

Eighth Week, Second Day 

A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant above 
his lord. It is enough for the disciple that he be as his 
teacher, anji the servant as his lord. If they have called 
the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more them 
of his household! Fear them not therefore: for there 
is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, 
that shall not be known. What I tell you in the dark- 
ness, speak ye in the light; and what ye hear in the ear, 
proclaim upon the house-tops. And be not afraid of them 
that kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but 
rather fear him who is able to destroy both soul and 
body in hell. Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? 
and not one of them shall fall on the ground without 
your Father: but the very hairs of your head are all 
numbered. Fear not therefore: ye are of more value 
than many sparrows. — Matt. 10:24-31. 

Even character of the highest type, as with so noble a 
spirit as Amiel, can be sapped and weakened and made 
fruitless by the irresolution and ineffectiveness that come 
from fear — not frorti the groundless pathological fears of 
disordered nerves, but from an imagination over-sensitive 
to the real ills of life, and to the limitations of one's own 
deficiencies. To distrust oneself too far is almost as hurtful 
as to distrust God. To be compelled to act and choose con- 
tinually when tormented by the sense of one's own insuffi- 
ciency and the cruel uncertainty of life's chances, is to lead 
a life hesitant and clouded, shorn of the calm fortitude of 
a true disciple of Jesus. Nothing great can come of it. The 
qualities of wnse, strong leadership are not to be found in it. 

Just because Jesus asks for the qualities of greatness and 
leadership in his disciples, he demands a fearless optimism 
and points out the way to its attainment. He would have 
them rest, as he rested, on the loving care of a Heavenly 

no 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-3] 

Father. He did not gloss over or seek to minimize the limita- 
tions of imperfect character or the unkindly chances of this 
world. How could he, who was himself a Man of Sorrows? 
"In the world ye have tribulation," he said. But he bade 
them trust in the wise compassion of God, who knew their 
circumstances utterly and who would overrule all seeming 
evil to their good. No blow of evil fortune could come to 
them as a blind, insensate injury, but only as something to 
be used for them constructively by a Father's love — as was 
true of the harsh wrongs done to Jesus. He demands this 
quiet, trustful self-possession if men are to follow him. 

O Lord, help me to see thy love in the dark cloud as well 
as in the sunshine. May I be sure that in life and death I 
am in the hollow of thy hand. 

Eighth Week, Third Day 

And one out of the multitude said unto him, Teacher, 
bid my brother divide the inheritance with me. But he 
said unto him, Man, vtho made me a judge or a divider 
over you? And he said unto them, Take heed, and keep 
yourselves from all covetousness: for a man's life con- 
sisteth not in the abundance of the things which he pos- 
sesseth. And he spake a parable unto them, saying, The 
ground of a certain rich man brought forth plentifully: 
and he reasoned within himself, saying. What shall I 
do, because I have not where to bestow my fruits? And 
he said. This will I do: I will pull down my barns, and 
build greater; and there will I bestow all my grain and 
my goods. And I will say to my soul, Soul, thou hast 
much goods laid up for many years; take thine ease, eat, 
drink, be merry. But God said unto him, Thou foolish 
one, this night is thy soul required of thee; and the 
things which thou hast prepared, whose shall they be? 
So is he that layeth up treasure for himself, and is not 
rich toward God. — Luke 12:13-21. 

No one will doubt that Jesus has touched upon an almost 
universal weakness in his warning against covetousness. All 
about us it is blasting ^ the possibilities of high character 
every day. It is one of the compelling human appetites, like 
hunger or thirst. It operates in Chicago just as it did among 
the patriarchs who kept their flocks and herds in the desert. 

Ill 



LVIII-4] BUILDING ON ROCK 

An ordinarily ambitious man can hardly help longmg for 
the pleasures and privileges that wealth alone can bring — 
leisure, travel, refining influences of every sort, and all the 
endless catalogue of things that gratify the senses. Some- 
times it seems as though it were of no more use to forbid 
ourselves to covet than it would be to forbid ourselves to be 
hungry. How fiercely and how naturally we want the things 
that money would put within our reach, that yet we cannot 
get! And yet Jesus says uncompromisingly, "Keep your- 
selves from all covetousness." 

Evidently it can be done. Jesus did it. Men and women 
without number have done it ever since. Most of the great 
helpers of humanity have done it, scientists like Darwin and 
Pasteur as truly as saints like Bernard and Francis, but 
it is only accomplished, as Bushnell said, by the expulsive 
power of a new affection. The mere negative prohibition 
is not sufficient. But a positive love for what God would set 
us to do has always proved enough to still the gnawing rest- 
lessness of selfish desire, and draw us into contented fellow- 
ship with him in the work of his kingdom. It is in the 
truest sense satisfying to be rich toward God, even though 
poverty may give some heart-aches along the way. The 
poor fellow with the many barns and many goods never 
caught a glimpse of how good it was to rest in what his 
Father would count riches. 

To be in fact a friend and follozver of Jesus is to have 
one's character more and more purged of the itching craving 
for the good things fortune brings to others. 

Eighth Week, Fourth Day 

But they that are minded to be rich fall into a tempta- 
tion and a snare and many foolish and hurtful lusts, such 
as drown men in destruction and perdition. For the love 
of money is a root of all kinds of evil: which some reach- 
ing after have been led astray from the faith, and have 
pierced themselves through with many sorrows. — i Tim. 
6:9, 10. 

And Jesus looked round about, and saith unto his 
disciples. How hardly shall they that have riches enter 
into the kingdom of God! And the disciples were amazed 
at his words. But Jesus answereth again, and saith unto 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-4] 

them, Children, how hard is it for them that trust in 
riches to enter into the kingdom of God! It is easier for 
a camel to go through a needle's eye, than for a rich man 
to enter into the kingdom of God. And they were 
astonished exceedingly, saying unto him, Then who can 
be saved? Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it 
is impossible, but not with God: for all things are possi- 
ble with God. — Mark 10:23-27. 

''Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." 
Jesus had no quarrel with riches as such, like a modern 
Bolshevik. He was concerned with the heart and its affec- 
tions. He was trying to lead men into large-hearted ways, 
worthy of children of the Father, and he found money one 
of their worst entanglements. And he is neither telling a 
secret or uttering a threat when he says that riches make 
it hard for a man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. It is 
a matter of fact and commonest observation. We do not 
have to be moralists to see the enormous difference between 
the people whose heart is set on riches and those whose 
heart is set on doing God's will in the world. One has 
only to look in their faces or listen to their voices to read 
something of the contrast. The man or woman whose chief 
aim is money or its equivalent is steadily looking down ; the 
man whose chief aim is one of love finds his gaze more and 
more drawn upward, in spite of all the mists and vapors life 
can breed. 

The mere possession of money, of course, does not deter- 
mine the way one's dearest ambition sets. A Russian anar- 
chist may be as cruelly greedy and selfish as a Prussian 
junker, as all have seen. And yet the mere possession of 
wealth tends to center one's affection where all this potential 
power and pleasure lie, in heaps of gold. The man who 
earned it may be of a Spartan simplicity of life and un- 
worldliness of aim. But by the second or third generation 
the fatal tendency to selfishness and pride is too likely to 
assert itself, like a poison in the blood, dulling the vision of 
highest things. 

It is in early life that the warning should sound loudest 
in our ears. Then, if ever, is the time of generous idealism. 
And if in those years our heart is covetous of what money 
brings, checking our impulse to dedicate ourselves unselfishly 

113 



[VIII-5] BUILDING ON ROCK 

to the need of others, our soul shrivels with the long life- 
choice of what is beneath the best. 

The life of Jesus was one of unselfish love. It is of no 
use even to talk of Christian character save as we are willing 
to he drawn into a heart sympathy with him, with all it may 
cost in the choosing of a life-career. 

Eighth Week, Fifth Day 

Now when Jesus was in Bethany, in the house of Simon 
the leper, there came unto him a woman having an 
alabaster cruse of exceeding precious ointment, and she 
poured it upon his head, as he sat at meat. But when 
the disciples saw it, they had indignation, saying, To 
what purpose is this waste? For this ointment might 
have been sold for much, and given to the poor. But 
Jesus perceiving it said unto them, Why trouble ye the 
woman? for she hath wrought a good work upon me. 
For ye have the poor always with you; but me ye have 
not always. For in that she poured this ointment upon 
my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Verily I 
say unto you, Wheresoever this gospel shall be preached 
in the whole world, that also which this woman hath 
done shall be spoken of for a memorial of her. — Matt. 
26: 6-13. 

This is as far from covetousness as the east is from the 
west. We seem to be in a different world from that of the 
man who wanted a good time for himself for many years. 
Here is one who has forgotten about herself as completely 
as Jesus forgot himself for others in those last days of life. 
And it is interesting to see how Jesus reacted to such an 
exhibition of character. We can read his will as surely by 
what he approves as by what he rebukes. And here was a 
case where he gratefully approved with his whole heart. 

What she did had in it the very opposite of greed. It 
illustrates how the demon of covetousness may be exorcised 
and utterly overthrown in a human spirit. It was the work 
of love. There may have been a time when this Mary would 
have looked long and lovingly at a shining pile of three 
hundred silver denarii on a table, meaning so many hours 
of gratification. But now they were as nothing to her in 
comparison with her devotion to him who had brought her 

114 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-6] 

to God. He was despised and forsaken of men ; they were 
hunting his life at that moment; well, she would show him 
the uttermost honor she could compass. At other times she 
could honor him in other ways — by helping his poor, for 
example. But at this perilous moment, when black hatred 
overhung them all, she must show her proud loyalty and 
unmeasured gratefulness, without reckoning the cost. Money 
could have no better use. 

It was like a cup of cold water to one parched with thirst, 
and Jesus commended her royally. He lets us see what God 
honors, a generosity that forgets itself in love, a character 
in which hungry appetite is mastered by the highest impulse. 
The appetite seems to be in us all, slumbering perhaps, but 
easily roused into hot desire. But equally near us are tides 
of a divine life and love, to which we may open our hearts 
until we, even we, begin to think not in terms of personal 
gain hut in the high values of the glory of God. 

Eighth Week, Sixth Day 

Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God. 
... Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not 
commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one 
that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed 
adultery with her already in his heart. And if thy right 
eye causeth thee to stumble, pluck it out, and cast it 
from thee: for it is profitable for thee that one of thy 
members should perish, and not thy whole body be cast 
into hell. And if thy right hand causeth thee to stumble, 
cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is profitable for 
thee that one of thy members should perish, and not 
thy whole body go into hell. — Matt. 5:8, 27-30. 

If we are to follow the teaching of Jesus at this point, we 
shall find ourselves in flat contradiction with the impatient 
voice of the world. People say that it is only the doctrines 
of Christianity to which the world has grown indifferent, 
and that for the ethical teaching of Jesus it has nothing but 
admiration. Would that this were true ! It is not. And 
nowhere does the harsh discordance between his will and 
that of the polite world appear more sharply than in this 
matter of keeping the heart pure. Nowhere is the strain on 
character today more severe. 

115 



[VIII-71 BUILDING ON ROCK 

Jesus was no ascetic. He believed in a rich, full life, 
sensitively responsive to every source of joy, brimful of 
natural human satisfactions. But to be human and natural 
meant, to him, to be true to our divine lineage as those 
"made in the image of God." The more perfectly one an- 
swered in spirit to his Father's spirit, the more truly human 
and natural he was, the richer his life, the greater his joy. 
His life and its satisfactions were not narrowed, but ran far 
out into the infinite and eternal, so that as yet it did not 
even appear what he should be. 

A large element in the most popular art and literature of 
our day in all Christian lands tells us that we should be 
human and natural above all, fearlessly'- and without apology, 
that we should live out our complete selves. But as the animal 
impulse of ape and tiger is still strong in us, to be natural 
is to be something far different from the man or woman 
of Jesus' thought. Perhaps the tiger has few apologists in 
these days. But the ape is in high favor — its horrid leer 
peeps out at us from how many of the books and plays and 
pictures of our time! Of course it claims to be all in the 
way of an untrammeled art, a generous revolt from prudery 
and hypocrisy ! But it amounts to an endless solicitation 
to the very thoughts and desires that wither the life of God 
in one's heart, as poison gas withers the roses in a chateau 
garden. Jesus said, "H thine eye cause thee to stumble, 
pluck it out and cast it from thee." And this he said, not 
because he was a prude or a kill-joy, but because to him 
God meant everything; and to lose sight of God, with the 
self-styled Bohemian, was not jolly life, but a dread injury, 
fruitful of loss and deepening disappointment. 

O Lord, help me to think this matter through to a conclu- 
sion of the will. May I highly resolve to abhor and shun, 
all my life long, every needless incitement to evil thought, 
that my heart may be pure and strong for such service as 
thou hast for me to do. 

Eighth Week, Seventh Day 

And there came unto him Pharisees, and asked him, 
Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? trying him. 
And he answered and said unto them, What did Moses 

ii6 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-7] 

command you? And they said, Moses suffered to write 
a bill of divorcement, and to put her away. But Jesus 
said unto them, For your hardness of heart he wrote you 
this commandment. But from the beginning of the 
creation, Male and female made he them. For this cause 
shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave 
to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh: so that 
they are no more two, but one flesh. What therefore 
God hath joined together, let not man put asunder. — Mark 
10:2-9. 

You can pretty well judge the nobility of a man's character 
by his tiiought about marriage, if only you can find it out. 
We do, in fact, justly rate the moral advancement of a nation 
by its attitude to women. The social stratum in which 
marriage and the whole sexual relation are a perennial 
jest, on the stage or off, is a stratum of corruption. In pro- 
portion as the words mother, wife, and sister stand for sacred 
associations held in reverent esteem, do we rise toward our 
true estate as members of our Father's household. 

We are not concerned here with Jesus' specific teaching 
as to divorce, but with his unmistakable attitude to the 
whole problem of the relation between men and women. He 
lifts it up at once out of the muddy associations with which 
humanity had soiled it, and holds it in a setting of divine 
light, glorified. It is an ideal estimate, to be sure, but not 
less true. He was no hermit, ignorant of what the life of 
the people really meant. He grew up in a home, with his 
mother and his sisters always at his side. He had heard 
from childhood the characteristic neighborhood gossip of a 
Syrian village. Both good and evil had displayed them- 
selves before his eyes. And, after all, he utterly repudiates 
and forbids any thought of the home less than one divinely 
noble — the thought of his Father. Both men and women 
are the children of God, and those whom love brings to- 
gether in the sacred fellowship of marriage are made one 
by their Father. The glory of the goodness of God is brought 
nearer to them by their love, even though it has to win its 
triumphs patiently and out of much infirmity. 

To many in our day, steeped in the thought of a decadent 
society and literature, this may seem purest moonshine. But 
it is a vision of truth, a vision of life's glory, that is always 

117 



[VIII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

dawning anew on human sight, and that redeems life from 
sordid commonness. Jesus bids men to look out through 
his eyes ; to break free from the base, defiling selfishness and 
sensuality of their time ; and to stand with him for better 
hopes for society than men yet can ' realize — not petting and 
humoring such animal instincts as may still be quick within 
them, as decadent genius would have us do, but claiming 
their high estate as children of the Most High. 

O God our Saviour, thou canst do for us and in us what 
we have tried in vain to do for ourselves. Give us an early 
victory over all that stains and shames, that we may have a 
long workday unspoiled by the things that cut us off from 
Thee, our strength. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 
I 

Sooner or later we come to realize how great is the strain 
on character due to life's anxieties. No one can fully antici- 
pate how insidiously but how threateningly the strain arises 
to cripple our energies and entangle us in self-absorption. 
The shadow of it hardly falls across our early days, except 
as we are tempted occasionally to indulge in -a fit of the 
blues, more by way of self-indulgence than from real trouble 
of spirit. The resilience and buoyancy of youth carry us 
on hopefully, even when, as in the recent storm of war, all 
the contingencies of suffering and death suddenly open up 
before us. It is when our reserves of vitality and nervous 
force begin to be depleted, when the rebound to health and 
good spirits no longer follows so quickly or so surely on 
the heels of sickness or disappointment, that we realize how 
Christian character demands genuine courage and firm opti- 
mism, daily renewed from deep springs of strength and re- 
assurance. 

The light-heartedness that comes from natural high spirits 
and overflowing health is an inexpressible blessing, but how 
many of us have watched it die down like the flame of a 
candle going out for lack of oil ! The cares of business and 
professional life, the responsibilities of home and children, 
the failure of early ambitions, and the gradual oncoming of 

ii8 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-cT 

losses and limitations that will at least never grow less, the-' 
intractable sorrows and wrongs of society about us — ^in ai 
hundred ways "the heavy and the weary weight of all this' 
unintelligible world" begins to wear upon our spirit. The' 
more sensitive and generous one's temper, the more vulner-* 
able it is to this invasion of its equanimity. 

Jesus understood this problem of our human life with a* 
deep and penetrating sympathy. He knew how many hopeful 
lives were frayed away by the mere wear and tear of anxieties 
unwisely born. He had been in too many homes, listened to: 
too many querulous tongues, seen too many faces deep-lined, 
with trouble, to be in any doubt about the dangers and' 
temptations that come from leaving one's spirit open to the 
fret of adverse circumstances. He knew that any noble 
character, if it is to last through a burdened life and yet 
be a steadying, cheering force for others, must itself be- 
steadied and cheered by an ever-renewed trust in God. 

First of all, he gives us the philosophy of wise common 
sense. "Be not anxious for the .morrow, for the morrow 
will be anxious for itself. Sufficient unto the day is the evil 
thereof." As a matter of commonest observation and ex- 
perience, we weary ourselves with climbing mountains of 
difficulty to which we never actually come. The worst ills 
are those of anticipation. The actual emergency somehow^ 
brings with it a certain reenforcement and stiffening of spirit, 
sufficient for the need. But the imagined and foretasted 
evils arc the ones whose ceaseless, dragging burden wears 
out one's endurance and spoils the passing days. "As thy 
days, so shall thy strength be" (Deut. 33:25) is an old, true 
promise on which multitudes have rested and found it ful- 
filled. But nowhere is strength promised to enable us today 
to bear tomorrow's burden, with an added load of anxious 
concern for a long vista of days and years to come. A 
strong, helpful character must husband its own resources 
economically, not waste them in selfish useless fears for the 
future. And Jesus demanded this firm, reasonable self^ 
restraint on the part of his disciples, so that they might 
give their entire force to the business of the hour. 

But it is not only on this shrewd common sense that he 
relies to enforce his command. He grounds it, as he does 
all his commands, on the realities of God's will. "Your 

119 



[VIII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Father knows" is the conviction on which he bids them rest, 
as on a pillow for weary heads at night. He evidently has 
the most perfect confidence that the God who clothes the 
flower and cares for the sparrow is watchful and solicitous 
for the good of his children, so that men, sharing this con- 
viction, may truly rest in the Lord and wait patiently for 
him, even when things go wrong. Of course, what he is 
solicitous to secure for his children is not the richest food 
and the most expensive clothing, it is not the greatest 
possible amount of ease and comfort, and the least possible 
acquaintance with strain and hardship. He would be a 
poor Father were he as fondly weak as that. He knows what 
we need, to bring out the best that is in us — not only the best 
for thirty years of business life here and now, but the best 
for all our unmeasured capacities that reach out into the 
unknown. 

Even here in this world of cruel forces and evil men, he 
is concerned, if we will let him, to make all things work 
together for our good, a§ he did for his Son, Jesus. So 
that, if we believe this, we may stop worrying over the 
future, may even be like those of whom it was said long 
ago, "Thou wilt keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is 
stayed on thee; because he trusteth in thee" (Isa. 26:3). 
Jesus not only held this out as a privilege, but even solemnly 
enjoined it on hi^ disciples as a duty. It is part of any 
strong, true character, he said, by trustful peace to save its 
energies from waste. 

n 

Nothing in the range of human experience is better assured 
as a fact and not a fancy, than this freedom from paralyzing 
fears for those who trust in the God of Jesus. Most of all 
was it evident in the life of Jesus himself. If anyone will 
sit down and rapidly read His life-story with this in mind, 
he will be impressed anew with the marvellous self-mastery 
of our Lord in the face of pitiless, overhanging tragedy. 

Most of us know something of the tense strain of over- 
wrought apprehension, such as comes when we face some 
approaching pain or sorrow, like that of a surgical operation. 
The shadow of it, many days in advance, makes it difficult 
for us to break away from our self-absorption in the pros- 

120 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-c] 

pect, or to give our undivided attention to our friends. What 
it must be in the case of a criminal awaiting death, we do 
not like to think. Jesus saw vividly before him the shame 
and torture and loneliness and death, overhanging all and 
advancing relentlessly day by day. His sensitive spirit must 
have suffered under it more keenly than we can measure. 
But even up to the last night, "having loved his own that 
were in the world, he loved them unto the end." To read 
the story of that last evening, with its quiet thoughtfulness 
of affection for his friends, is to wonder at his calm, all 
threaded through with peace and joy. He was not numbed 
with the chill of fear; he was not even anxious for the 
morrow. All that there was of him was at his disposal still 
for his Father's work. There was no wastage. When the 
moment came, and the onset of it in the lonely night swept 
him into the deep waters, he struggled desperately as any 
son of man had ever done, and struggled through, with his 
Father's help, to peace and self-mastery again, to live out 
those last grim hours in faith and love. But though he 
was a Man of Sorrows, he lived through all his years under 
the blue sky of his Father's comprehending purpose and 
sympathy. 

No one can doubt that, to him, this confidence in a Father 
in the face of a stormy world means everything or nothing 
for human life. It is not to be taken, like occasional doses 
of soothing medicine, at times of acute mental disturbance 
when some sort of quieting influence is clearly indicated as 
desirable. If Jesus was mistaken in his lifelong conviction 
as to the reality of a personal God and Father, then obviously, 
if we are honest, we shall have nothing to do with the com- 
fort of any overruling Power, wiser and m.ore loving than 
our earthly parents. It is not for us, even though it may 
have been the consoling light behind the dark for ages. But 
if Jesus was right, if his trust in God was not a treacherous 
delusion, then what does it not mean to those who take his 
word as truth ! Today and tomorrow, through lonely years 
or sickness, in death as well as in joy, and illimitably beyond 
death's brief interruption,- "If God be for us, who can be 
against us?" So that we may boldly say, "The Lord is my 
helper, I will not fear." 

This great, sustaining buttress of a courageously unselfish 

121 



[VIII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

character, the only Christian character, rests squarely on 
faith. It was a faith that in the case of Jesus, where it was 
applied, so to speak, with a hundred per cent of efficiency, 
worked out into the supremely perfect life — the crowning 
development in human evolution. Jesus bids us to be with- 
out fear, to go in peace, by virtue of this same faith. Judging 
by its fruits, these nineteen hundred years, we may safely 
venture to claim for ourselves the fearlessness and courage 
of a quiet heart. 

Ill 

"What is a man profited, if he gain the whole world, and 
lose or forfeit his own self?" That is the way Jesus sums 
up the whole argument between covetousness and love. As 
always, he is thinking of the great future — or the endless 
present — of one whom God has made for Himself. What 
conceivable abundance of things could one gather about him- 
self here for a few years, that would counterbalance in its 
satisfactions the blank loss of himself and his very capacity 
for joy? Of course, when it is put as Jesus put it, the 
question is unanswerable. Life is what we all want, and not 
a pile of heavy baggage that we can carry only half way on 
our journey. As Jesus said unanswerably, "A man's life 
consisteth not in the abundance of the things which he pos- 
sesseth." 

And yet while Jesus' argument is for most of us thoroughly 
unanswerable, how few it has convinced in practice, from 
that far-off day to this ! Probably more people are yielding 
assent to it today than ever in the world before, because 
so many have ceased to be satisfied with conventional religion 
and are seeking earnestly to know what Jesus himself really 
wanted men to do. The traditional religion of the creeds 
yields at best a rather dubious sociological program ; but the 
religion of Jesus goes straight as an arrow to its mark, in 
fundamental social questions. He lived a life and taught a 
life that gives covetousness hardly a foothold or a handhold 
in human character. His scale of values is such that one 
who honestly follows after him is looking in quite a different 
direction from that of money-making. To be sure, he will 
have to make money if he is to live ; he will have to put 
energy into his work, also; and if he does this he is likely 

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EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-c] 

to get ahead in the race. He may even have as his special 
aim the winning of wealth for the unselfish uses of the 
Kingdom. But he cannot breathe the same spiritual air as 
Jesus, or look out on the same horizons, and yet live for 
the sake of piling up possessions, especially at the expense 
of others. The spirit of his Master and of his Father are 
in him, and what that spirit is, the life and death of Jesus 
clearly show. 

Now the world of today is groping in almost an agony of 
desire for anything that can really overthrow the power of 
greed and envy and suspicion. There is no hope in auto- 
cratic militarism; there is just as little hope at the opposite 
end of the scale in anarchistic socialism. Both lead to chaos 
and death. The people of China, as much as those of Russia 
or Austria, are just now in the acutest need of some power 
that can make justice and benevolence actually triumphant 
in the State, and France and America and Italy also can 
find their ultimate social salvation only in deliverance from 
the cruel covetousness of men, whether bourgeois or prole- 
tarian. 

Jesus alone opens this door of hope on mankind, not only 
because he gave himself unreservedly to the glorious ministry 
of love, but because he dedicates all his followers — all the 
men and women and children who should ever hear his 
words and do them — to the same life of obedience to their 
Father's will. He does not suddenly make them all saints, 
because we are what we are, intractable stuff at best for 
divine uses, but he opens their eyes at once to a new range 
of values and a new standard of ambitions. 

• IV 

In the common room of Magdalene College, Cambridge, 
two portraits hang on the wall, facing each other across the 
table, portraits of two men who shared the zest of life to 
the fullest and who fought hard for life's prizes. One is 
of Pepys — sleek, satisfied, kindly, sensuous; a man who 
cheerfully tried to skim the cream off life's surface for him- 
self and measurably succeeded. The other is of Charles 
Kingsley, who also delighted in life beyond most men, but 
whose heart burned like a flame in sympathy with the wrongs 

123 



[VIII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

and sorrows of the poor, and who gave himself like his 
Master in generous devotion to all who needed him. And 
his face, lined with love and pain, is of one who looked 
ineffably far beyond the getting and spending of life's 
pleasures. 

It is not so much that one man had a different philosophy 
from the other, though this was true, as that one man lived 
in the closest contact with the spirit of Jesus and the other 
instinctively avoided any contact with him more intimate than 
that of formal religion. But the world today, in its present 
mood, recognizes in good-natured Pepys the despair of 
society and in Charles Kingsley, with all his limitations, the 
power that can lift it out of its despair. 

Jesus directed men's attention away from the slow accu- 
mulation of property to the life that satisfies. He actually 
persuaded them that for one to be rich toward God was to 
be the happy man and fortunate. To lay up treasure in 
heaven by love and service was to have one's thoughts steal- 
ing away to God, instead of to the safe-deposit vault and 
the greetings in the marketplace. He made men feel that in 
the family of God we are all dependent upon one another 
for our true development, and our interests bind us closely 
together and to Him. 

It is not good for a man to be freed from this sense of 
a genuine interdependence of friendly, mutual responsibility 
and obligation. But one of the first and most obvious effects 
of wealth is to isolate a man from his fellows. It not only 
makes them look at him with envy or suspicion, but it tends 
to make him feel himself their superior, and to show, it may 
be unconsciously, the masterfulness or the condescension of 
the man of power toward one who is the mere pawn of in- 
dustry. His wife and daughters speedily become too refined 
to notice socially the womenfolk of a workingman, such as 
Jesus was, and in a space of time ridiculously short — much 
less than a generation — a gulf is fixed between the man with 
money and the man with only a laborer's wages. 

One of the great lessons of the War, never to be un- 
learned, has shown how quickly and how naturally men of 
different social standing are drawn together in brotherly 
friendship in the trenches, where the adventitious inequalities 
of wealth and family are suddenly removed. Thousands of 

124 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-c] 

young fellows in the ranks, who otherwise would never have 
exchanged more than an indifferent stare, have come to feel 
in the presence of common duty or danger the genuine 
brotherhood of all brave true hearts. It has been a revela- 
tion at once of our common kinship in God's family, and of 
the cruel artificialities of a society disordered by undue re- 
spect for wealth. 

The Christian character, so far as it is Christian, shares 
the mind of its Master at this point. It perceives without 
argument that it must be free from that love of money that 
lays waste the kingdom of God on earth. Jeers of ironical 
laughter might well salute such a statement were it made 
concerning the visible Church. In many lands the love of 
money has well-nigh made its very name a mockery. What 
Christendom has been, all men know! Nevertheless, the 
ancient words of the Master still sound clear. The fiery 
message of his love and of his cross has not changed by a 
hair's breadth from its first trumpet-call for self-denial be- 
cause God himself is love. Whenever the thoughts of men 
come back humbly and obediently to Jesus Christ, they find 
him still waiting to deliver society from the curse of covet- 
ousness, summoning all mankind to the life of genuine 
brotherhood. 

The time of fierce testing is now close upon the Church 
once more. The millions from the camps and trenches are 
coming back among us, to take up the old lines of business 
and industrial life. But they will never take them up with 
full acceptance of the old order, where the privileges and 
opportunities go as a matter of right to the children of the 
well-to-do, and the grinding monotony of the factory and 
the tenement remains as a matter of course the inheritance, 
of the poor. Never again will it be a matter of course, as- 
it has been. And our Lord waits, as it were, to see how his, 
followers will help on the better day — whether they will 
help it on at all, or will resent even the suggestion that the 
children of the "hunky" and the "dago" should have an 
equal opportunity with their own. There will be bitterness 
and folly on both sides. It will be easy to lose patience and 
to lose hope. All sorts of leadership in the contest will break 
down, from that of Karl Marx to the latest doctrinaire. But 
the leadership of love will not break down nor fail its fpl- 

125 



;[VIII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

lowers, and that perfect leadership is found in deed and in 
►truth in Jesus Christ. 

V 

If one would have a reason why real Christianity is not 
more popular in the world, he will find one of the reasons 
in the uncompromising demand of Jesus for purity of life 
and thought. His ideal of character in this respect is not 
that of the average man on the street, nor of the world of 
art and letters in our day or any other. It precipitates one 
into the old warfare between culture and self-restraint. Jesus 
demands a self-restraint that for many a man of ardent 
temperament must be inflexible as iron, if it is to serve its 
purpose. He would have a man remember, not, apologetically 
and excusingly, that his physical ancestors are not long down 
off the tree, but, proudly and confidently, that the Father 
of his spirit is God, and that he must somehow get through 
God's world with all its bewilderingly voluptuous appeals 
cleanly ^and honorably, for his own sake, and his brother's 
sake, for the sake of his sister, too, and for the sake of God. 

This means that he must have certain set principles and 
habits of mind and action that are sternly unyielding. It 
means that, knowing himself, and knowing the type of appeals 
and suggestions that pierce like arrows, that burn like fire, 
that rob him of his self-control, he should make it the un- 
flinching habit of his life to avoid them so far as he may 
reasonably do. It mieans that he should not deliberately 
subject himself to temptation, but make a resolute and un- 
wavering fight, lifelong if need be, against the influences 
that corrupt and shame and unfit him for the high-souled, 
keen endeavor that he ought to be able to render to his Lord. 

In doing this he will find that he has turned to breast 
a current of popular opinion so overwhelming as to be well- 
nigh irresistible. By some of the highest and most intel- 
lectual as well as by some of the lowest and basest elements 
in modern society, he will find himself assailed with stinging 
epithets, as Jesus was — fool and fanatic, Philistine, Puritan, 
and prude ; he will wonder whether he is really playing the 
game, or whether he is running away from what no all- 
round man should try to shun. The devil will come to him 
and whisper that to the pure all things are pure, even when 

126 



EVILS THAT LAY WASTE LIFE [VIII-c] 

the salacious play at which he is asked to look fairly drips 
with indecency. 

Only one thing will unfailingly steady him and keep him 
true at every stage of the long fight, and that is the sight 
of Jesus, and an honest acceptance of his ideals. Then he 
will always have before him the true glory of a man — not 
the base, pinchbeck culture of the man of the world, who 
has seen life and knows it all, the culture that for all its 
emancipation leads down and back again to the long night 
from which society has been emerging, but the glory of him 
who overcomes one of our fiercest enemies, and by so much 
helps to make life sweet and sacred and by his clean manhood 
gives courage to the faint. Jesus came that men might have 
life — not the night life of a great city, that bubbles and festers 
in the dark, but the life that flows pure from its source in 
God, and flows on in turn, as Jesus said, in rivers of living 
water from the man who believes in him. 

It is true that in the old, evil days of decadent Rome, when 
Christianity was still at close grips with heathenism, society 
was full of evils shocking for a sensitive soul to see; and 
many of the truest disciples of Jesus thought to follow him 
better by shunning altogether the sights and sounds that 
appealed clamorously to the senses. This they could do only 
by quitting society altog-ether. And they became quitters. 
They renounced and resigned the common joys of men, and 
hid themselves away in the deserts and lonely places, where 
only the faintest ripples of passionate life from the stormy 
sea outside could reach their sheltered inlet. It was one 
of the many terrible blunders into which the inexperience 
of. the early disciples led them. Jesus was no quitter, even 
for the sake of the unruffled calm of a religious life. He 
came to send not peace, but a sword, in the face of the 
world's evils. 

This we understand. It is not the part of a Christian to 
dodge or creep away from anything that his duty requires 
him to meet, whether fascinating or repugnant, or to re- 
nounce any normal joy that is the good gift of God to men. 
The self-denial that is required of us is not that of shutting 
our eyes to anything God would have us see, or of refusing 
any exquisite delight he would have us share. Our work 
may call us to pass through some strange associations, and 

127 



[VIII-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

the glamor of them may be subtly demoralizing. But our 
Lord will be with us in all the daily round, and in his bracing 
company we might even live and work in the streets of 
Vanity Fair and take no evil. 

That is the test of safety and loyalty for a strong man — 
to indulge himself in nothing that he must consciously break 
step with his Master to enjoy. If he and we can, so to speak, 
face in company life's sensuous appeals — well and good ! But j 
the character built on rock is one that for God's sake keeps 
stern guard over a clean heart, and lays its plans and shapes 
its habits for an unsleeping self-restraint. 



128 



CHAPTER IX 

The Duty of Prayer 

DAILY READINGS 

Probably some of us would not consider the habit of 
prayer essential to the highest character. We are likely to 
regard it as a sort of an extra, or an accomplishment in the 
Christian life, not necessary for the average man but suited 
to people of a pious or strongly religious temper. We may 
turn to prayer instinctively in an emergency, but we do not 
feel the need of it or even see much place for it in the every- 
day life of the ordinary person. Moreover, we are not sure 
how far it is a reality, and the whole subject is clouded in 
these days with much perplexity. 

If we are to leave it thus on one side, we have no choice 
but to leave Jesus on one side also as a spiritual guide. With 
him it was of primary importance. He not only included it 
among his commands, but gave it a position of prominence 
hardly exceeded by any other duty of life. And his frequent 
emphasis upon its necessity for right living is only a reflec- 
tion of his own experience. He found it necessary for him- 
self and won his personal victory with its aid. 

We are compelled, therefore, to give it a leading place in 
any discussion such as this, dealing with character based upon 
his teaching. We count him a specialist in the art of noble 
living. His insight into spiritual realities was keener than 
that of any other human teacher. It worked out in his own 
life with marvelous results of strength and beauty. We take 
his judgment in the matter, then, as one of unrivaled au- 
thority. We are not now concerned with the views of the 
latest writer on psychology or philosophy, whose opinions in 
twenty years will have ceased to be of interest. We are 

129 



[IX-i] BUILDING ON ROCK 

sitting at the feet of the unchallenged Master, and look to 
see what he thought about the place of prayer in the life 
of humanity. 

Ninth Week, First Day 

And in the morning, a great while before day, he rose 
up and went out, and departed into a desert place, and 
there prayed. And Simon and they that were with him 
followed after him; and they found him, and say unto 
him, All are seeking thee. And he saith unto them. Let 
us go elsewhere into the next towns, that I may preach 
there also; for to this end came I forth. — Mark 1:35-38. 

And it came to pass in these days, that he went out 
into the mountain to pray; and he continued all night in 
prayer to God. And when it was day, he called his 
disciples; and he chose from them twelve, whom also he 
named apostles. — Luke 6:12, 13. 

It is natural that we should turn first to Jesus' own ex- 
ample. The force of his commands would be greatly re- 
enforced if we found that they grew out of his personal 
experience. If that perfect character of his was the out- 
growth of a life of prayer, it would be the strongest possible 
argument for the reasonableness and efficacy of such a habit. 
It is unthinkable that we should be superior to the need of 
a support which he found indispensable. If any man ever 
lived for whom definite times of prayer were unnecessary, 
that man was Jesus. We might justly say that, for him, to 
labor was to pray. He lived in harmony with his Father's 
will, and would seem to have had no need to trouble himself 
with special efforts to secure his Father's attention or win 
his sympathy. All excuses we make for our own indif- 
ference to prayer could be made with far more weight for 
him. 

And yet when he was most busy and most in need of rest, 
he took the hours that belonged to sleep, in order to talk 
with God alone. His sense of need constrained him. The 
reality of the help of prayer was a greater refreshment than 
sleep. The moral triumph that he won, he won by its aid. 
And where he led the way he bids his disciples follow. 

Unless Jesus was quite deceived, I am wasting the very 
130 



THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-2] 

power out of which victory is won, if I allow doubts as to 
the theory of prayer to rob me meantime of spiritual contact 
iviih God. 

Ninth Week, Second Day 

But thou, when thou prayest, enter into thine inner 
chamber, and having shut thy door, pray to thy Father 
who is in secret, and thy Father who seeth in secret shall 
recompense thee. — Matt. 6 : 6. 

Jesus puts the duty of prayer in the simplest and most 
uncompromising language possible, "Pray to thy Father." 
He seems to have assumed that it was ■ something that all 
men would wish to do at times, and, indeed, probably all 
those to whom he spoke would have agreed with him. But 
even if he were speaking to the atheistic Bolsheviki of our 
day, or to those who are so one-sidedly cultured as to find 
no place for so quaint a survival as prayer, it is likely that 
he would use the same language, with a deeper earnestness 
of pity and invitation. It is his Gospel, on which he stands 
or falls as a religious leader, that all men may have a 
gracious hearing with the infinite Father of our spirits — the 
men who work in the mines, who lounge in the parlors of 
our fashionable clubs, who pasture their herds on the Mon- 
golian plateau. Their very need, both in their trouble and 
their ill-desert, makes him attentive to their call, and his ear 
is not heavy that he cannot hear. It was not a new message, 
but Jesus wonderfully brought it home to men's attention, 
both by word and life. 

In the passage for today he draws this unforgettable 
picture of the man who seeks to pray, getting away from his 
business and the crowd, going in to his inner room, shutting 
out the world, and there, in that loneliness and silence, talking 
heart to heart with Him who loves him and made him for 
Himself. 

In the lonely night when you cannot sleep, when perhaps 
you are in anxiety or pain, then in a moment it will be true 
that God and you arc there together in the silent room, and 
you will be telling him your need. 

131 



[IX-3] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Ninth Week, Third Day 

Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and ye shall find; 
knock, and it shall be opened unto you: for every one 
that asketh receiveth; and he that seeketh findeth; and 
to him that knocketh it shall be opened. Or what man 
is there of you, who, if his son shall ask him for a loaf, 
will give him a stone; or if he shall ask for a fish, will 
give him a serpent? If ye then, being evil, know how 
to give good gifts unto your children, how much more 
shall your Father who is in heaven give good things to 
them that ask him? — Matt. 7:7-11. 

"Ask and ye shall receive." This is one of the mountain 
peaks of Christian teaching. It stands up superbly clear 
above all the drifting clouds of theory and discussion. It 
does not argue or qualify ; it calmly affirms. Whoever is 
sure that he knows better may deny ; but he will never 
persuade more than a small circle that he is wiser than Jesus. 
The truth is somehow lodged among the indestructible in- 
stincts of humanity, pagan or Christian. You will find 
almost these same words on votive tablets in myriads of 
Chinese temples, telling how needy souls have cast themselves 
on Heaven to find, as they believed, response. 

Jesus put this instinctive hope into the clearest language, 
and made plain the reasons for his confidence. We are not 
orphaned or alone here amid the physical environment of 
earth. Our Father is "touched with the feeling of our in- 
firmities." He welcomes our childlike confidence in his 
sympathy and love. And how. any little child can walk a 
dangerous way in company with his father and never turn 
to hmi for help or direction, passes one's understanding. 
Any philosophy of prayer that denies or obscures the rela- 
tionship of a true filial dependence is not Christian. Any 
character that seeks to build itself up out of the sufficiency 
of its own resources, is not a character of Jesus' moulding. 
He finds in prayer the force that keeps us ever turning back 
to God ; even our pain and sin and failure serve to draw us 
more longingly to Him. 

It is our privilege to quote this promise times without 
number, if need be, as our warrant for casting ourselves on 
God for help; and times without number we shall thank Him 
for lifting up our heads. 

132 



THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-4] 

Ninth Week, Fourth Day 

And he said unto them, Which of you shall have a 
friend, and shall go unto him at midnight, and say to 
him. Friend, lend me three loaves; for a friend of mine 
is come to me from a journey, and I have nothing to set 
before him; and he from within shall answer and say, 
Trouble me not: the door is now shut, and my children 
are with me in bed; I cannot rise and give thee? I say 
unto you. Though he will not rise and give him because 
he is his friend, yet because of his importunity he will 
arise and give him as many as he needeth. — Luke 11:5-8. 

In nothing be anxious; but in everything by prayer 
and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be 
made known unto God. And the peace of God, which 
passeth all understanding, shall guard your hearts and 
your thoughts in Christ Jesus. — Phil. 4:6, 7. 

The ease of mind that comes from reverently making God 
a confidant in matters great or small is much more than a 
mere spiritual luxury; it is a constructive element in noblest 
living. We have all met those who have spent their lives 
unselfishly for many years — it may be a mother at home or a 
Salvation Army worker in the city — whose faces are like a 
benediction in their peacefulness. Does anyone suppose it 
is by accident that this type of countenance belongs so con- 
spicuously to those who have leaned hard on God through 
life's difficult places? Rather is it the unmistakable hand- 
writing of obedience to Jesus' bidding, as given in this pas- 
sage. He urges a childlike simplicity in availing oneself of 
God's unfailing readiness to help, in accordance with the 
old assurance, "'Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall 
sustain thee." 

It would almost seem as though Jesus must have had in 
mind the objection so often heard today, coming from an 
over-refinement of delicacy about troubling God with our 
trivial affairs, that we should not worry the Almighty about 
the insignificant littlenesses of our daily life. Here again 
we have to choose between the advice of Jesus and the advice 
of those who come between us and him. He knew how 
trivial were even the largest interests of a peasant home, 
and yet he spoke this parable, urging those present hearers 
to commit their needs more fearlessly and trustfully to God. 

133 



[IX-5] BUILDING ON ROCK 

O Lord, help us to venture confidently upon the sympathy I 
of our Father, bringing to him our daily needs and perils, 
that we may be better equipped for every good work. 

Ninth Week, Fifth Day 

Simon, Simon, behold, Satan asked to have you, that j 
he might sift you as wheat: but I made suppUcation for | 
thee, that thy faith fail not; and do thou, when once thou \ 
hast, turned again, establish thy brethren. And he said i 
unto him. Lord, with thee I am ready to go both to 
prison and to death. And he said, I tell thee, Peter, the ^ 
cock shall not crow this day, until thou shalt thrice deny ! 
that thou knowest me. — Luke 22:31-34. j 

Here is an example from our Lord's life of one kind of j 
prayer, prayer for others. How many of us who are reading 
these words would be what we are today if it were not for ' 
the prayers of our fathers and mothers? They have been 
an unobserved but encompassing influence about us daily for 
many years. We cannot guess how much they have had to \ 
do with what we are. What they have done for us, we in i 
our turn are to do for others. The highest type of character | 
would seem to be that which is most efficient in its helpful- | 
ness for others, and Jesus sets forth this efficiency of inter- ' 
cession that should belong to those who follow him. He 
did the most he could for Peter at a certain crisis of Peter's | 
life, by praying for him, .| 

We simply cannot help sharing in this form of ministry ' 
if we are deeply seized with our Lord's spirit. The trouble 
is that we are generally too indifferent and too lazy to make l^ 
this effort for our friends' good. We are not enough con- [ 
cerned for their welfare, and we shrink from the concen- [ 
trated effort of such a labor on their behalf. To offer them \ 
sympathy, to jolly them up, to spend on them time or money, j" 
is easy enough. But to pray for them in their time of need ! 
We avoid it and the thought of it, just as we shrink naturally 
from any task that demands a difficult concentration of 
thought and will. 

Often there is no other avenue than this by which we can ^ 
give any aid to a friend who is struggling with temptation. 

134 



THE DUTY OF PRAYER IIX-6] 

Should we stand helpless at such a time if we heeded Jesus' 
words about prayer f 

Ninth Week, Sixth Day 

After this manner therefore pray ye: Our Father who 
art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name. Thy kingdom 
come. 'Thy will be done, as in heaven, so on earth. Give 
us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our debts, 
as we also have forgiven our debtors. And bring us not 
into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. — Matt. 
6:9-13. 

What do we know about what Jesus would really have 
men pray for, day by day — ordinary men, farmers and fisher- 
men, and women in their homes? What did he expect them 
to talk about with God? Here are the beginnings of an 
\ answer, in this brief fragment that he taught his disciples. 
It has a plaCe in it for food and clothing and the everyday 
wants that bulk so terribly in the lives of the poor, and for 
forgiveness and help and deliverance also. Jesus is not 
ashamed of any of these, as fit to claim God's notice. But 
before all else he turns men's thoughts to the great ambitions 
that transfigure the humble lot of those who seem hemmed 
in to petty things. 

"Our Father" first of all ! That is indeed "very good," 
; as Little Joe said. Then comes a child's prayer for his 
father's honor, "May thy name be kept holy." There fol- 
lows that brave, splendid, fighting prayer, that is the heart 
of the whole passage, "Thy kingdom come. Thy will be 
done in earth, as it is in heaven." It is not a passive utter- 
ance of resignation ; it is the triumphant anticipation of a 
victory wide as humanity, and of the end of the long cam- 
paign, after battles and changes and overturnings past num- 
bering, the triumph of God's love. It is a prayer like war 
music, making the blood thrill. It is a soldier's prayer for 
every day, around which to build one's life. 

"Thy kingdom come" is like the great drive-wheel that 
keeps in balanced movement all the complex machinery of 
our hearts' desires. Are we fretted and depressed by irritat- 
ing cares? Again and again and again, as we lift up our 
eyes to the great petition Jesus gave us, our lives fall into 

135 



[IX-7] BUILDING ON ROCK 

order and peace, and our selfish pride sinks out of sight 
in that divine consecration. 

Great praying makes great living, and the Lord's Prayer 
gives an infinite outreach to the daily wants we bring to God. 

Ninth Week, Seventh Day 

Then cometh Jesus with them unto a place called 
Gethsemane, and saith unto his disciples, Sit ye here, 
while I go yonder and pray. And he took with him Peter 
and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful 
and sore troubled. Then saith he unto them, My souljs 
exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: abide ye here, and 
watch with me. And he went forward a little, and fell 
on his face, and prayed, saying. My Father, if it be pos- 
sible, let this cup pass away from me: nevertheless, not 
as I will, but as thou wilt. And he cometh unto the 
disciples, and findeth them sleeping, and saith unto Peter, 
What, could ye not watch with me one hour? Watch 
and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit 
indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak. Again a second 
time he went away, and prayed, saying, My Father, if 
this cannot pass away, except I drink it, thy will be done. 
— Matt. 26 : 36-42. 

"Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord. Lord, 
hear my voice." Here is our Lord himself passing through 
the deep waters, and crying for deliverance from his distress. 
Surely his Father heard his voice ; but he did not save him 
from Pilate's hall, or the pillar of scourging, or the shameful 
hill of execution. He answered his prayer with strength 
sufficient to go forward unafraid, hour by hour, till the dread 
day was done. He gave him not escape, but glorious victory, 
which is what a true man most desires. 

And so our Lord taught us vividly, not by word but by 
life example, how he would have us pray — not in the way 
of contesting God's will, or seeking to bend it to our pur- 
poses, but of seeking strength and faith enough to make 
His will our own, and accomplish what He has given us 
to do. 

We do not have to think very long to see that the only 
safe way for us to choose in life is the way in which He 
would have us go. The only thing we surely want is the 

136 



THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-c] 

thing our Father is wanting to give us. Death or life, joy 
or sorrow, we most want what his wise love would bring. 
And so we learn to say. Thy will be done. 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 



It is only true to say that all we have been studying up 
to now of the character approved by Jesus leads up to the 
subject of this week, the necessity of prayer. We have seen 
how all his commands find their full significance in the intent 
to relate men more closely to their Father in heaven. He 
bids them love Him, imitate His goodness, obey His will, 
and live life through, fearlessly and hopefully, as those whom 
He has made for Himself. It is as they draw near to Him 
that they are to become great in character. 

All this presumes an intimacy of relation between men and 
God that seers and saints in all lands have dimly felt after, 
but that Jesus alone clearly enunciated and brought home 
to the understanding of common people. But how can there 
be such growing fellowship in character if there is no com- 
munication between the two? How can there be anything 
like such friendly intimacy if Father and son are held apart 
as if in different worlds? The whole development of charac- 
ter as set forth by Jesus seems to imply and rest upon a 
progressive acquaintance with God by men. And how is 
this to be if we can hold no speech with him? A boy might 
as well expect to make the acquaintance of his father and 
mother without ever a word being exchanged between them. 

As a matter of fact, the life and teaching of Jesus every- 
where assume the possibility of the interchange of thought 
between us and God, and the reality of a genuine spiritual 
fellowship. This interchange is not at the first of our seek- 
ing. Jesus makes it plain that it is we who draw away from 
God, and live as in a far country, where all communication 
is interrupted. Our sin makes us afraid of God, and our 
preoccupation with ourselves makes us unwilling to hold 
speech with him, lest it entangle us in unwelcome obligations. 
Always our Lord is urging men to draw closer to God. This 
is his Gospel — that God wants them and will receive them 
lovingly. 

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[IX-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

How, then, could he do otherwise than urge on them the 
habit of prayer? He put it before them not as a means of 
accumulating more things in their lives, or of dodging some 
of the hardnesses of this world of physical law, but as a 
means of self-realization as God's children. He drew strength 
from it himself for daily living, whether in the shop or in 
the temple, and he would have them walk with the Almighty 
as he walked. 

II 

Of course this is not the conception of prayer with which 
we start out as children. To most of us in childhood, prayer 
was simply a means, more or less reliable, of getting things 
that no one else could give us. But as we grow older, and 
come to realize what the battle of life really means, we begin 
to long for spiritual contact with God more than for anything 
else that life can yield. He, and he alone, has all the 
resources by which we are to triumph. We are ignorant, 
weak, doubting, selfish, easily tempted and led into un- 
faithfulness; he is glorious in strength and truth and love. 
We want to win our fight, to overcome evil, to hold out a 
hand of help to those at our side. And our weakness and 
our divine hunger for better things drive us to God. We 
cannot be what we would be without him. We cannot win 
through successfully alone. In our loneliness and defeat 
of soul we must be able to speak with him, and in the crises 
of life we do in fact turn inevitably to him for help. 

This is what a well-known writer from the trenches means 
when he says : "Beneath all our inherited or intellectual 
differences there is an enveloping and penetrating necessity 
holding us together. ... It may be described as the instinct 
for establishing and retaining contact with the Supreme 
Being. Perhaps the least objectionable covering phrase is 
'prayer.' When speaking to our troops, whether in the 
camps of the back zones or in hastily gathered groups at 
the very battle-front, I found that the one subject that did 
not lead to controversy was prayer. In the uncertain or 
terror-shadowed or anguished periods of a man's life, every- 
thing that had once seemed inseparable from civilization and 
culture is swept away, and there remains only the instinctive 
impulse to establish contact with God. And the act is suffi- 

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THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-c] 

cient, for the man becomes calm, brave, hopeful, or patient, 
as his need may require." 

This is what prayer means on its deeper level — the satis- 
fying of our human hunger for God. As the Psalmist 
expressed it long ago, and it is as true for the twentieth- 
century business man as for the tent-dweller of that distant 
past, 

"O God, thou art my God ; earnestly will I seek thee : 
My soul thirsteth for thee, my flesh longeth for thee, 
in a dry and weary land where no water is" (Psalm 63: i). 

Ill 

But Jesus said, "Ask, and ye shall receive." That is very 
definite, very concrete, almost naive in its simplicity. It is a 
promise of "answers" to petitions. But how could Jesus have 
said less ? When our poverty and weakness come in touch 
with God's strength and abundance, how can we do other 
than lay our need before him? If I am just at the point of 
breaking down under temptation or trial, how can I even 
look to the Father of all mercies without a cry for aid? In 
any case, men do not stop to argue about it. If they have 
caught a glimpse of the God of Jesus Christ, they turn to 
him in need as instinctively as a child to its mother. It is 
easy at this point to drown our intellect in mysteries until 
we can see nothing. But the heart has reasons of its own 
that cannot be permanently stifled, and in any of life's ele- 
mental moments we find ourselves turning to God for de- 
liverance, in response to a deeper wisdom than the logic of 
argument. 

Jesus, then, is only confirming the half-conscious conviction 
of the race when he says, "Ask, and ye shall receive." He 
illuminates and glorifies the vague expectation of humanity. 
He is not ashamed to say, "Ask." He is not s'peaking of 
the high spiritual converse possible to favored souls, but of 
-the cry of a child, of the publican, or the penitent thief. 
Just as the wounds of a soldier are a passport to the mercy 
of a Red Cross nurse, so our wrongdoing or our distress 
is our claim on our Father's compassion. And the needs 
and failures of life are so many, and its emergencies are 
so various 1 If we are drifting easily with a favorable 

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lIX-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

current, we may not feel how inevitable and how constant 
is the demand for prayer ; but if we are playing a man's 
part in the good fight, trying to lift others up, we shall be 
driven to ask light and help, to ask hungrily, to ask per- 
sistently. 

Surely there is a great field of blessings in which our 
Father is more than ready to meet the requests of his chil- 
dren. Our prayers are really the coming to birth in our 
own minds and wills of the wishes God has for us. By our 
very asking with importunity, we make it possible for him 
to answer — as when we ask for courage or strength or for- 
giveness or equipment for service. The asking and the 
receiving cannot be far apart if the prayer is to be of use 
at all. Prayer in inaumerable instances is a going forward 
to meet the gracious will of God. 

Most of us cannot give a very adequate testimony to this 
direct and immediate benefit of prayer, because we have so 
imperfectly and timidly tested it. But it has been attested 
times without number by those whose character and service 
are the pride of humanity. It is worth thinking deeply, for 
example, on what one like Mary Slessor says, who, being 
much alone in the forest, "often had no other one to speak 
to but her Father," and so "just talked to him." She wrote 
for a friend these words : 

"My life is one long, daily, hourly record of answered 
prayer. For physical health, for mental overstrain, for guid- 
ance given marvelously, for errors and dangers averted, 
for enmity to the Gospel subdued, for food provided at the 
exact hour needed, for everything that goes to make up life 
and my poor service, I can testify with a full and often 
wonderstricken awe that I believe God answers prayer. I 
know God answers prayer. I have proved during long 
decades while alone, as far as man's help and presence are 
concerned, that God answers prayer. Cavilings, logical or 
physical, are of no avail to me. It is the very atmosphere 
in which I live and breathe and have my being, and it makes 
life glad and free and a million times worth living. I can 
give no other testimony." 

IV 

It does not need much reflection to see that the benefits 
for which one may ask hopefully are closely limited by a 

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THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-c] 

variety of considerations. God does not place us in a world 
of ordered and, in the end, beneficent law, only that this law 
may be set aside whenever it interferes with our plans or 
runs counter to our wishes. Few of us would endure much 
hardness if the choice of it lay with us. Jesus was a man 
of prayer, but he was also the Man of Sorrows. And every 
one of those sorrows lay in some thwarted wish or purpose, 
some undesired trial or temptation, which he would hardly 
have chosen for himself could he have had his own wish 
for the asking. 

Obviously that is not the sort of asking that he had in 
mind. It is no blessed method of escaping the unpleasant 
things or the bitter necessities of human life in such a world 
as this. Our childish idea of its unhindered field of opera- 
tion has to give way to the facts. Even the old Hebrew idea, 
expressed here and there in the Psalms, of the earthly 
security of the godly, has to be explained and qualified. 

But even when no immediate or direct response follows, 
Jesus finds his sufficient answer to prayer in the resulting 
acceptance of God's will. If we can rise to the point where 
we can make his will our choice, then, indeed, we have gained 
the victory and our prayer is answered. A small boy must 
have a good deal of faith in his mother if he decides that 
he wants for himself to go to the dentist's because she says 
it is necessary. He cannot know how necessary it is, but he 
relies on the wisdom of her love that he has otherwise proved 
in a hundred ways, and he has the manliness to accept the 
situation and go forward of his own free will without com- 
plaint. 

We never get beyond the childhood stage with God, never 
get to the point where we dare to set up our own judgment 
of what is good for us, as against what he allows to enter 
our life. Would we dare refuse it if he bids us go forward 
to meet it? What do we know about the alternative that 
we would rashly and ignorantly invoke? Our only possible 
peace and security is in trusting that his love is guiding us, 
as though he held our hand. And how little would we dare 
insist on receiving the good fortune that to us seems so 
desirable ! We should be afraid of it without his approval ; 
it could only entangle us in difficulties unforeseen. 

And so, when we come to plead the promise, "Ask, and ye 

141 



[IX-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

shall receive," we find our way wide open in one direction 
only, but otherwise straightly hedged about — we must ask 
as those who leave to God the way of answering. He hears 
our prayer. How can he but hear, in whom we live and 
move and have our being? He hears it, so Jesus says, with 
more than the affection of a father for his child. The answer 
Ave must leave to his loving will. Will not love answer ? But 
he will not wrong us by giving what may not rightly be 
ours, for which we are not ready, or which might even bring 
subtle injury to our souls, or to those we love. We under- 
stand so little of the laws of the spirit, and our timidity and 
dread of suffering so overpower our judgment, that we dare 
not trust our own desires. We can only bring them to our 
Father, and talk them over under the illumination of his 
presence, and leave them with him, with a great gladness. 
We have talked with God ! Everything outwardly may be 
the same as before, but it is not the same for us. We 
have left the matter with him. He and we stand now to- 
gether, and we have no fear of the outcome. 

V 

Elizabeth Fry, the friend of the prisoner, left on record 
this witness, during her last illness : "I believe I can truly say 
that, since the age of seventeen, I have never waked from 
sleep, in sickness or in health, without my first waking 
thought being how I might best serve the Lord," No wonder 
she seemed like an angel from God to those desperate women 
she sought to aid. Imagine how great a character would be 
that was actually built up around the petition. Thy kingdom 
come. And many such there have been, in answer to the 
teaching of Jesus. The world is the better for them, and 
every such life is a fresh witness to the divine wisdom of, 
him who left to his disciples so noble a prayer. Our lives 
must, indeed, be keyed to this note today, if they are to 
fulfil their completest mission to society. And how are they 
to be so perfectly brought under the dominance of this 
purpose, as by a daily waiting upon God for the establishing 
of his kingdom upon earth? 

In this era of world reconstruction after the Great War, 
it is evident, as it has never been before, that only around 
this majestic ambition can the fortunes of the nations be 

142 



THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-c] 

regrouped with any hope of stability. No lesser principle 
will ultimately answer. It is because President Wilson, in 
his various state papers, has clearly voiced a program for 
the nations that is based on a hearty acceptance of this 
principle, that the common people of the world have hailed 
him as their spokesman and champion. The elaborate states- 
manship of Metternich or Palmerston must presently give 
way to the policy of a simple loyalty to the life-purpose of 
Jesus, that God's will might be done on earth in righteous- 
ness. All men are summoned to labor and pray that justice 
and mercy may take the place in international relations of 
pride, or greed of power, or racial hatred. The brotherhood 
of the family of God's children is, in these days of scientific 
efficiency of destruction, the only alternative to social suicide 
and ruin, so that, in a sense, the wide world is called today 
in this era of grave social peril to join for the protection 
of society in this prayer of Jesus. It is a prayer great enough 
for the common desire of all humanity, and it is simple 
enough for the life of the humblest individual. 

In either case it is not a mere pious aspiration ; it is a 
fighting prayer, unless it is only from the lips outward. To 
take this prayer honestly upon one's heart to God each day, 
in sincere longing for its answer, is not only to take into 
one's life a formative principle of constraining power, but 
to dedicate oneself to a cause against which all the powers 
of evil are arrayed. Every "interest" intrenched in selfish- 
ness, from the self-indulgence of a friend to the military 
pride of a nation, will resist it hotly. Any social propaganda 
that seeks only the good of a class is an instinctive enemy 
of such a prayer. Laziness and indolence and love of 
pleasure resent it to the last. Only the spirit of Jesus finds 
it altogether good and sinks its own advantage in the coming 
of God's will on earth. 

But every day of one's life, this Lord's Prayer will call 
one afresh to a task that is never ended — a task that is wide 
as the world, and for all who would come up to the help 
of God against the mighty. If it were an unvoiced desire 
hidden in our hearts it would be a good thing, but to have it 
a petition that we bring to God each day — to face with him 
in all its bearings on 'our personal duty, to consider in the 
revealing light of his love and compassion for all men — is 

143 



[IX-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

to come into a fruitful fellowship with God that means sure 
ennoblement of life. To pray this prayer intelligently is to 
be kept at the heart of the good fight so long as our spirits 
may endure. And it is our Master's will that this should 
be true of us, every one. 

VI 

But because the Lord's Prayer is social in its terms, and 
associates us in our common needs indissolubly with the 
whole brotherhood of men, we must not forget that there 
is a place for prayer of the most personal and individual 
description. Such prayer can no more be called selfish than 
it is selfish to breathe or eat. It would be as reasonable 
to blame a drowning man for lack of altruism because he 
struggles fiercely for his life, as to blame the publican for 
praying, "God be merciful to me a sinner." The deepest 
experiences of the soul are solitary of necessity, and the 
prayers of the ages bear witness that the sternest struggles 
of the soul have to be fought out in a great loneliness before 
God. The Psalms are pervaded with the sense of the 
solidarity of the people of God, and yet how many of them 
bear witness that, in sin and temptation, in sorrow and 
sickness and death, all else is lost sight of but the relation 
of individual dependence on God's lovingkindness. Indeed, 
we often gladly screen ourselves a little from the solemnity 
of this undivided responsibility to God by associating our- 
selves with our fellows ; but in the moments of intense 
consciousness of our own wrongdoing, or our own need, 
this cannot be done. The shame and guilt of Peter, when he 
went out and wept bitterly, were such as he could share with 
no other soul, and his forgiveness and his joy when his 
Master sought him out after the resurrection could only be 
talked over between him and his Lord alone. When Paul 
lay blinded on the Damascus road, his prayer, "What shall 
I do, Lord?" was only the first of many that were intensely 
personal, though not selfish. In the deep waters of life it 
is the very solitariness of the soul that drives us to take 
refuge with God. Indeed, in grave illness or at the time of 
death even our closest friends belong as it were to another 
world, and the loneliness would be appalling but for the 
close presence of him who heareth prayer. 

144 



THE DUTY OF PRAYER [IX-c] 

We need make no apology, then, for prayer that is as 
private and personal as is the unshared responsibility of 
our own soul to God. Our own battles must be won before 
we can eflfectively bring aid to our fellows ; our prayer for 
others is of little worth until we have first found our way 
to him from whom help comes. And it is the peace and joy 
that we have won out of stress of soul, through many sea- 
sons of pleading with God for personal deliverance and for- 
giveness, that fit us for the privileged ministry of intercession 
for others. It is by the mercy of God that we are made 
able to take the needs and frailties of others on our hearts. 
It is not a matter of course that we shall all of us set to 
work at once to pray the unselfish prayer for our friends and 
companions, or for the needy classes in society. If it were, 
why is it that prayer-meetings have practically died out in 
so many college Associations? It is because the ordinary 
Christian, busy with his own affairs, has neither power nor 
taste for so divine a labor as that of praying for his fellows. 
He can neither see the use of it, nor has he the power to 
engage in it. The ability and the hunger for a ministry of 
help so rare and precious come only from the triumph of 
the Spirit of God in one's own soul. Only if we have won 
our own battle, only if we are proving for ourselves the 
reality of prayer, and its power to work marvels, is our heart 
set free to take upon itself with eager sympathy the needs 
of those who are fighting a losing fight. It is easy to talk 
of altruistic praying, but, as a matter of cruel experience, 
"except the branch abide in the vine," little enough of that 
sort of life will be circulating through our veins. 

Lord, lead us on until we are able in deed and in truth 
to pray the prayer of unselfish longing for our brother's 
good. 



145 



CHAPTER X 

The Goodly Fellowship 

DAILY READINGS 

Criticism has always been suspicious of any recorded 
utterances of Jesus, that looked beyond his tiny Galilean 
horizon or made provision for continuance of his work after 
his death. And yet he must needs have been a feather-brain 
indeed, if he had not pondered often and deeply on the prob- 
lem of what would become of his work, and of his disciples 
also, after he was taken av/ay. He was engaged with all the 
energy of his being in a clear-cut undertaking for the deliver- 
ance of men from evil. He drew his disciples after him 
into the same endeavor. Indeed, no one could share his life 
and spirit without being made a participant in his ambition 
and a partner in his enterprise of love. And Jesus clearly 
knew that he must die, and leave the continuance of his work 
to others. It is inconceivable that any thoughtful and far- 
seeing man in these circumstances should not have laid plans' 
for the perpetuation of his influence and activity, and given 
instructions to those who were to follow him, so far as he 
could wisely do, for the effective perpetuation of his mission. 

Such instructions we find, as a matter of fact, in the 
gospels — some few commands that looked to the maintenance 
on earth, long after he had left it, of the kingdom of love 
which he had founded and which he was to establish inde- 
structibly by his death. The only wonder is that these 
forward-looking instructions are so few. They are not in 
the least degree what his followers in after days would have 
liked. They wholly lack the precision and detail of organ- 
ization for which the ecclesiastic longs. They have chiefly 
to do with character, and are wholesome, natural, and of 
an extreme simplicity. They do not provide for the estab- 

146 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-i] 

lishment of a new religion or the government of a church, 
but out of a passionate yearning for men they do enjoin a 
close-knit brotherhood of loving, loyal hearts, for the saving 
of the world. Christian character involves a readiness, then, 
nay, an eagerness, to stand shoulder to shoulder with this 
great ministering brotherhood. 

This simple fellowship of faith and love has been worked 
out by the Church through the centuries in many ways. It 
has sometimes been elaborated to a complexity so artificial 
and burdensome as largely to smother its Founder's intent. 
But no imaginable development of human organization can 
hide the plain intent of our Lord that his disciples should 
cleave together and to him, so that his life and power might 
animate them with one spirit in the good fight for the King- 
dom of God. 

Some of these forward-looking commands of his, mere 
suggestions and glimpses of his thought, are discussed in the 
studies for this last week. The one characteristic they have 
in common is that they center closely about him, and draw 
their significance from his continuing activity. 

Tenth Week, First Day 

And as Jesus passed by from thence, he saw a man, 
called Matthev^r, sitting at the place of toll: and he saith 
unto him. Follow me. And he arose, and followed him. 

And it came to pass, as he sat at meat in the house, 
behold, many publicans and sinners came and sat down 
with Jesus and his disciples. . . . And as they went forth, 
behold, there was brought to him a dumb man possessed 
with a demon. And when the demon was cast out, the 
dumb man spake: and the multitudes marvelled, saying, 
It was never so seen in Israel. . . . Pray ye therefore the 
Lord of the harvest, that he send forth laborers into his 
harvest. — Matt. 9:9, 10, 32, 33, 38. 

It cannot escape the notice of anyone who reads the story 
of Jesus, that he was not a mere preacher of righteousness. 
He came, it is true, to re-create men morally. But he did 
not hope to do this merely by sowing the seed of truth for 
a year or two, and leaving it to make its unaided impression 
upon character after his death. As we are often reminded, 
the chief influence in the formation of character is friendship 

147 



[X-2] BUILDING ON ROCK 

— the force of personality. Argument, exhortation, instruc- 
tion, are all very well, but they are as nothing in comparison 
with the steady influence of a noble friendship, Jesus makes 
use of this principle as the primary force in uplifting men. 
They needed something that only he could give them. He met 
them with a straight command to follow him — not only to fol- 
low him, as disciples of a teacher who they believed was sent 
of God, but to take the heroic step of confessing him openly 
as Master, of identifying themselves with him and his cause. 
Manifestly this was not a force to operate only for a year 
or two while he was in Galilee, but, like all life's chief in- 
spirations, it was to reach on and on into the future. 

This step of open decisive confession was no cheap or 
easy condition. As he well knew, it searched the innermost 
intent of a man's heart. But its reaction upon character was 
and is amazing. It somehow stabilizes even a character 
hitherto weak and feeble, and founds it thenceforth, as Jesus 
said, upon the rock. This is not a matter of theory or of 
church doctrine, but of common human experience, repeated 
times past numbering. Such an open declaration of loyalty 
to him, such a definite crystallization of all our floating 
aspirations after the best we know, has the effect of a power- 
ful suggestion of moral victory — a suggestion that is of in- 
calculable potency and ever-renewed vitality. Our fortunes 
become consciously bound up with those of an invincible 
Leader. 

Tenth Week, Second Day 

Neither for these only do I pray, but for them also that 
believe on me through their word; that they may all be 
one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that 
they also may be in us: that the world may believe that 
thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast 
given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, 
even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they 
may be perfected into one; that the world may know 
that thou didst send me, and lovedst them, even as thou 
lovedst me. — John 17:20-23. 

So then ye are no more strangers and sojourners, but 
ye are fellow-citizens with the saints, and of the house- 
hold of God, being built upon the foundation of the 
apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the 

148 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-2J 

chief comer stone; in whom each several building, fitly 
framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; 
in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of 
God in the Spirit. — Eph. 2 : 19-22. 

Dr. Jefferson has truly said, "You can be a savage alone, 
but you cannot be a Christian." To be a follower of Tesus 
is to be brought at once into the powerful and transforming 
fellowship of Master and disciples. The Christian type of 
character is developed under a surpassing dynamic of spirit- 
ual sympathy and cooperation. You cannot meet Jesus' re- 
quirements by capturing his religious and ethical philosophy 
and going off with it by yourself apart, to apply it in your 
own way, as though it were no one's business but your own, 
the private and individual concern of your own soul only. 
A dog with a bone gets off by himself for its undisturbed 
enjoyment, the more secretly the better. But a man whose 
heart has been touched by his Father's love comes eagerly 
and affectionately into the family, like a boy forgiven in the 
home. He draws closer to his Father — inevitably closer to 
those of a like devoted purpose with his own. His life ex- 
pands and grows by its sympathetic contact with other lives. 

Ever since Jesus lived among men, those whom he brought 
to God have instinctively clung together and to him. He 
bade them do so, in some such words as John's gospel has 
preserved — not in any mechanical outward uniformity of 
belief in a hundred matters of faith and form and govern- 
ment, as to which honest men have always differed, but in 
the genuine brotherly cooperation of the disciples of Jesus. 
This spontaneous and inevitable fellowship of the men and 
women who have found life in Jesus Christ constitutes the 
Church. It is always being reborn, reshaped, reanimated, as 
the millions who compose it gain new visions of what real 
discipleship means. But the goodly fellowship goes on, the 
fellowship of those who would realize through Jesus Christ 
what God would have them be, and would leave the world 
better for their living. And in its loyal association is the 
world's greatest training-ground of character. 

Lord, help me to find some such place in thy Church that 
I may feel the heartbeat of the great family of redeemed 
souls dedicated to thy service. 

149 



[X-3] BUILDING ON ROCK 

Tenth Week, Third Day- 
Abide in me, and I in you. As the branch cannot bear 
fruit of itself, except it abide in the vine; so neither can 
ye, except ye abide in me. I am the vine, ye are the 
branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same 
beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing. 
If a man abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and 
is withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the 
fire, and they are burned. If ye abide in me, and my 
words abide in you, ask whatsoever ye will, and it shall 
be done unto you. Herein is my Father glorified, that 
ye bear much fruit; and so shall ye be my disciples. — 
John 15:4-8. 

Christians have always been accused of being so pre- 
occupied with another world that they were unpractical and 
ineffective citizens in this. The charge has often been true. 
But it has been because they were poor Christians. Jesus 
left the plainest instructions at the very last, as he did at 
the beginning, that the primary duty of anyone who followed 
him was to bear fruit here and now. If they shared his 
spirit, they would do this to a certainty. His picture of the 
servants with the talents shows how he expects men to 
make the most of what they have, under just these tempting 
conditions when we seem our own masters. His teaching 
makes men practical and effective, first of all right in the 
town where they live. They are not effective always as 
money-getters or self-boosters, but quietly and steadily effi- 
cient in all those things that make a man a desirable member 
of society, the things that by love and sympathy are making 
the world a better place to live in. 

After all, it is no worse to have one's thoughts engrossed 
with the prospect of a harp and crown hereafter than to have 
them selfishly monopolized with sport or study or even with 
getting ahead of the other fellow in business. Both courses 
are out of sympathy with the spirit of Jesus. He organized 
his followers on the basis of an association for service. And 
so, if life is before us and we have the shaping and spending 
of it in our hands, he calls us to make this our first concern, 
how we can bear the most fruit. 

What sort of fruit any branch of that glorious Vine will 

150 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-4] 

bear, we know well. Men saw it once in those Syrian homes, 
they see it today in every country under heaven. 

O Lord, grant in thy mercy that they may see it in my life, 
too. 

Tenth Week, Fourth Day 

They therefore, when they were come together, asked 
him, saying, Lord, dost thou at this time restore the 
kingdom to Israel? And he said unto them, It is not for 
you to know times or seasons, which the Father hath set 
within his own authority. But ye shall receive power, 
when the Holy Spirit is come upon you: and ye shall be 
my witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea and 
Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth. — Acts 
1 : 6-8. 

Anyone today who wished to revolutionize human thought 
on any subject would write a book, or several books, to 
extend and preserve his influence. Or he would at least have 
his lectures printed, or write to the newspapers, or in some 
way appeal to the world public, so that his spoken words 
might not fall to the ground and be forgotten like autumn 
leaves. Jesus left not even a scrap of paper, not so much 
as a letter to his mother or one of his friends. For a few 
months he talked with men, men mostly dull or thoughtless 
or impenetrably prejudiced. He added his voice to the babel 
of voices in that crowded Roman province, a single, mis- 
understood messenger among the thousand teachers of the 
empire. And then he vanished away, and there remained 
only the precarious memory of those spoken words, here and 
there where they had found lodgment in some hearer's mind. 

It was an amazing confidence he had that these words of 
his, spoken by the roadside to the poor, would never perish — 
an almost incredible presumption, one might say. But he 
knew what he was doing. He left witnesses ! They were 
just ordinary men and women, not influential people, or great 
scholars, yet men of such deep conviction and passionate 
devotion that they never could forget what he had done for 
them, or the vision of hope to which he had opened their 
eyes. The whole world structure of Christianity rests on 
their story of what they had heard and seen, a story of his 
living presence, renewed in each generation. To be a disciple 

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of Jesus means to be a man with a message of infinite help- 
fulness, based on personal experience. Jesus commanded 
his followers to take upon themselves this incalculable re- 
sponsibility of commending him to their fellows. This per- 
sonal endorsement of Jesus is the central force in the 
Church's extension of Christianity. 

No hook ivas necessary. You and I are his book today. 
Have we anything to say that would gladden a man's heart 
to hear, or li-oidd it only discourage and bewilder him? 

Tenth Week, Fifth Day 

And he took bread, and when he had given thanks, he 
brake it, and gave to them, saying, This is my body 
which is given for you: this do in remembrance of me. 
And the cup in like manner after supper, saying, This 
cup is the new covenant in my blood, even that which 
is poured out for you. — Luke 22 : 19, 20. 

For I received of the Lord that which also I delivered 
unto you, that the Lord Jesus in the night in which he 
v/as betrayed took bread; and when he had given thanks, 
he brake it, and said, This is my body, which is for you: 
this do in remembrance of me. In like manner also the 
cup, after supper, saying. This cup is the new covenant 
in my blood: this do, as often as ye drink it, in remem- 
brance of me. For as often as ye eat this bread, and 
drink the cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death till he come. 
— I Cor. 11: 23-26. 

It is safe to assume that every command of Jesus is 
directed to a real end in human welfare and has a reaction 
upon character. Here is a bidding which we in our day are 
apt to hold lightly, chiefly because it has been so extrava- 
gantly abused and because its true use is so little understood. 
But we cannot overlook it altogether, in a study such as this. 
The evidence for its genuineness is overwhelming. It has a 
prominent place in the first three gospels, is reaffirmed in 
one of Paul's earliest letters, and was evidently honored and 
obeyed by the earliest companies of Jesus' disciples. 

Jesus left no imposing liturgy for the new brotherhood he 
founded. The humblest fraternal order in our land has a 
fuller ritual than any he ever hinted at. But he knew how 
easily men forget, how quickly their perspective of values 

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THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-6] 

may be deranged, and he left this simple but touching serv- 
ice as a lasting reminder of his central place in their asso- 
ciation. It was an outward symbol of an inward and eternal 
reality — the fact that their life was fed by him. His death 
was the culmination of his life, and his life and death made 
plain the love of God for men. As they remembered him 
and his perfect self-giving for their sakes, they would be 
kept in his love, and his life would flow through them. 

This homely, familiar observance of eating a supper to- 
gether, so different from the stately ceremonials of priestly 
worship everywhere, was to be a joyous memorial service, 
binding him and his followers together in a common life. 
Its power lay in its simplicity. It was intensely, almost pathet- 
ically, human. Overlaid by mystery, buttressed with dogma, 
it becomes portentous, bewildering, and the very ones are 
turned away whom Jesus would first invite to sit with him 
at such a feast — the faithful, honest souls who would do his 
will, but who cannot discern him behind the veil of a 
miracle-working sacrament. 

We are losing some element necessary to the huilding up 
of character as Jesus would have it, if we are too timid or 
too careless to follow any one of his plain directions. 

Tenth Week, Sixth Day 

But the eleven disciples went into Galilee, unto the 
mountain where Jesus had appointed them. And when 
they saw him, they worshipped him; but some doubted. 
And Jesus came to them and spake unto them, saying. 
All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and 
on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all the 
nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father and 
of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to 
observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, 
I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. — 
Matt. 28: 16-20. 

To a world groping endlessly after God, Jesus brought a 
message of inexpressible gladness. Of course if, as many 
tell us, it was all a dream, that broke off forever with his 
death, then it was only natural that he should leave it to 
the oblivion in which it ended. But if it was indeed good 

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news of God, not for a day but for all days, then who can 
believe that he would not have left some such command as 
this for its spreading everywhere? If such a command 
were not recorded we should have had to imagine it, for it 
is the inevitable corollary of his life-work. 

For himself, in his brief workday, he accepted the neces- 
sary limitation to the lost sheep of the house of Israel, even 
though he plainly looked beyond them to the many who 
should come from the east and west, and from the north 
and south, who should press into the Kingdom of God. But 
when his life-battle had been fought out to the victorious 
issue, and he handed on to his disciples the Gospel of God's 
love, he handed them their orders for the long campaign. 
He sent them to all nations. The message obviously was for 
all the children of his Father, Jew and Greek, and the un- 
known children of the forests below the edge of the world. 
And his followers were the King's messengers, by virtue of 
their having seen the glory of God in the face of Jesus 
Christ. Freely they had received, freely they must give. 

Have we any fault to find with this standing order which 
meets us as we take our place in the long succession, hoping 
to quit ourselves like men? Naturally, if the Gospel has only 
a theoretical worth to us, we would not sacrifice much to 
give it to others. But suppose our hearts tell us that it is 
worth everything! What then? Is my contribution to the 
world-wide spreading of Christ's Gospel a fair measure of 
the value I set upon it, and of my gratitude to God? 

Tenth Week, Seventh Day 

Let not your heart be troubled: believe in God, believe 
also in me. In my Father's house are many mansions; 
if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to pre- 
pare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place 
for you, I come again, and will receive you unto myself; 
that where I am, there ye may be also. — John 14: 1-3. 

We have come to our last study of the words of Jesus, 
and it leaves us looking far on beyond these familiar days 
under the sun. What manner of life there may be beyond 
the impenetrable veil, we do not know — perhaps no human 
words could make us understand. We only know from 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-cJ 

Jesus that our Father is there, and that presently we also 
shall be there, still the children of his love. Then we shall 
see face to face, who now see darkly as in a mirror. 

It was unmistakably the will of Jesus that men should live 
in triumphant hope of this deathless future. Hardly one 
clear word did he say to meet our curiosity as to its nature, 
and yet all he said assumed that present and future make 
but one life, and that death is only a passing interruption 
of its activity. Well he knew how profoundly character 
must be influenced by such an expectation. There are many 
days when life floats on as gayly as a streamlet in the sun- 
shine. But gray days come, and days slow in passing, when 
it makes to us all the difference in the world whether we 
are going to the scrap-heap or are going home. This is where 
our Lord has gloriously reenforced our steadiness under 
strain, in that, through fair weather or foul, we know that 
we are going to our Father's house. "Where I am, there 
ye shall be also." David Livingstone would hardly have 
borne those years of appalling loneliness in the African 
forests had he not been cheered by thoughts of the great 
reunion that dawned on him at last in the little hut at Ilala 
where his journey ended. 

What it may he to enter fully into the joy of our Lord, we 
cannot guess. But it is for him who has been found faithful 
in a very little. May we gather some foretaste of it along: 
the way, as we go faithfully about the duties of the hour^ 

COMMENT FOR THE WEEK 

I 

If Jesus had left carefully drawn up a constitution and 
bylaws for his Church, with an authoiitative creed and. 
catechism for its guidance, he would have met the idea, 
of a large group of his followers from that day to this. But 
he would have left a yoke he had not the least wish to 
impose. His yoke was easy and his burden was light, where- 
in his Church has not always resembled him. And so, as a 
matter of fact, he rarely alluded to the Church that was to 
be. He spoke most earnestly and plainly on many things 

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[X-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

that seemed to him of first importance, but the organization 
of the Church was not one of them. 

Did he, then, leave his disciples without any principle of 
cohesion and cooperation, to take effect after his departure? 
He did not ! He gave them what they needed for most suc- 
cessful growth. He gave them a unifying principle stronger 
than any other that mankind has ever known — that of a 
supreme devotion to a common leader and a common cause. 
It has been, and always will be, a tie as strong and flexible 
as tempered steel. 

The story of the way in which this tie has held through 
the ages is one of almost incredible wonder, when we re- 
member the buflfetings through which the Church has come. 
Any fixed creed and .constitution would have withered into 
hopeless inadequacy, long beforjs now. But the living prin- 
ciple on which he organized the ever-growing host of those 
who should follow him thrills with the currents of spiritual 
force today, as truly as on that night of fear when his 
nearest friends hung on his last words. It is a principle of 
vital association with himself, adapting itself to the needs 
and comprehension of every age. As we see it worked out, 
there in Judea long ago, or in the slow disappointing cen- 
turies of fear and superstition, or among the people of the 
twentieth century whom we know, the energy that pulsates 
through it is from him. It is not the church machinery or 
the church creeds or the church sacraments that generate 
the power ; but as men living in his fellowship absorb his 
spirit, they learn to live the sacrificial life that actually 
redeems. 

It is this circle of faulty men and women, learning every 
day to live as Jesus would have them live, which makes up 
the Church. Whether Greek, Roman, or Protestant, Meth- 
odist, Quaker, or Presbyterian, as the faces of men grow 
gentle with the gentleness of Christ, we recognize the pres- 
ence of the true Church of Christ. And it is a tragedy for 
a true man to be found in critical alienation from its fellow- 
ship. He who hears the words of Jesus and does them finds 
his fitting place humbly and loyally in the ranks of those 
who have confessed Him before men. He asked it of his 
friends once, and his friends until today find it a reasonable 
and a rewarding thing to do. 

156 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-c] 

II 

We all know the type of man who can never be brought to 
play the game. Something is lacking in him that is necessary 
to the make-up of the all-round man. In school, or in col- 
lege, or on the team, or in any of the hundred organized 
activities of neighbor and citizen, he always wants to play 
a lone hand. He can never be brought to see the necessity 
for team play. There is some contrary element in him that 
makes him the despair of leader or captain in any concerted 
or effective action whatsoever. He is a fruitful source of 
irritation and defeat all along the way. Only when he comes 
up against the stern mandate of a nation plunged in war, 
does he find his lifelong individualism overridden and set 
at nought. Then, in spite of himself, he is made to serve 
the public good in the way of complete cooperation. 

But a character like his is plainly an imperfect character. 
His own tastes and opinions are so overshadowingly impor- 
tant that he can never subordinate himself to a common 
purpose for a common good. He can be a free lance, but 
he can neither be a soldier nor a comrade nor a man under 
any discipline or constraint whatever, except that of his own 
self-will. And the worst of it is that he is likely to pride 
himself on his superior intelligence and independence. He 
does not see what a poor skulker he is in times of supreme 
need, when men are giving themselves and all they have in 
concerted sacrifice for the common good. 

Jesus built his disciples' character on lines exactly the 
opposite of this. He could not do otherwise, being what he 
was. He was consecrated through and through — to the last 
ounce of his energy^to a great social mission, divinely 
loving and beautiful. He had but a handbreadth of time in 
which to give to men the first vision of his evangel. And 
then he had to leave the long, long fight to them. He would 
be with them in spirit and would cheer them on, biit they 
must stand as one man against a world in arms. H ever 
concerted life and action were necessary, it was then ; not 
only because of the uncountable odds against them, but 
because their very purpose and method were those of love, 
and if they themselves did not illustrate and enforce it, they 
were defeated from the start. This trait of character, de- 

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[X-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

manding subordination of selfish plans to the welfare of 
the group, was to be the distinguishing mark of his followers. 
"By this," he said, "shall all men know that ye are my 
disciples, if ye have love one to another." He knit them up 
in a closer comradeship than that of an army, "for my sake 
and the gospel's." To be true to the teaching of Jesus is to 
be willing to play the game, in its demand for close asso- 
ciation in intensive life and effective action. 

If the Church had only obeyed his bidding, she would have 
swept through that old weary pagan world as Garibaldi and 
liis legion swept through Italy. But the more intricate and 
elaborate her organization and her creeds became, the more 
"heresies and divisions multiplied, until even the heathen 
jeered at the spectacle of angry discordance she presented. 
It is wonderful how for a thousand years under these condi- 
tions the clear spring of truth kept flowing, though so many 
muddied the stream just below the source. But now we are 
once more seeing the real intent and command of Jesus, and 
we are hearing penitently his call to get together on the 
simple basis of obedience to him, that we all may be one, 
in love and loyalty to Leader and Cause, in effective co- 
operation. 

It certainly does not call for the churchman's dream of 
outward unity under one name and method and government; 
but it does call for a true brotherhood and discipleship, 
proudly confessed, and it leaves no place for the man who 
would take all that Jesus can offer of moral inspiration, and 
shirk all that he asks in sacrificial dedication. Christo et 
Ecclesicc may seem dead enough as an outgrown corporation 
tnotto, but it is written in letters of living light over against 
all who would build character under that Master-Builder, 

III 

Among thoughtful young people today there is an un- 
doubted reluctance to attend the Lord's Supper, even when 
they are members of the church. This is natural enough ; for 
there has probably been more of unreality at this point than 
at any other in the whole field of church observances. Ever 
since the first century, it has been thrust into a position of 
strained and artificial significance, for which the simple 
directness of Jesus' teaching affords no warrant. There is 

158 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-c] 

little doubt among scholars of today that the doctrine of the 
eucharist was deeply affected by the "mystery religions" of 
the Orient, especially those of Isis and Serapis and of Mithra, 
which gave so large a place to the secret rites of sacramental 
cleansing from sin. 

In any event, long before the downfall of paganism, the 
Lord's Supper was generally accepted as a sacrament in 
which there was not only the "real presence" of Christ, but 
"a sacrifice, offered to God by a priest, inclining God to be 
gracious to the living and the' dead." For nearly a thousand 
years the mere participation in the sacrament was held to 
be the chief means of building up Christian life. Private 
Bible-reading or study of the teaching of Jesus was for 
obvious reasons practically unknown, and for the most part 
there was no adequate instruction from school or pulpit. 
The miraculous transference of life by means of the real 
presence in the eucharist was relied upon to effect, thauma- 
turgically, what we of today recognize can be achieved only 
by patient instruction in God's truth and a hearty obedience 
to his will. 

Surely it is not strange that the pendulum is now swinging 
well to the other side. As we turn back to Christ and make 
his own words the standard for our thought, we find noth- 
ing to warrant the dogmatic assertions of the Church, in- 
sisted on through ages of fierce and bloody contention that 
made a tragic mockery of this bond of loving fellowship. 

Yet no accumulation of human imaginings can blind us to 
our Lord's intent, or hide the fact that even in its distortions 
this memorial of a vital union with the Master has been 
the inexpressible consolation of his people. We cannot afford 
to disregard any of his plain commands ; to do so is to lose 
something vital to the upbuilding of the richest character. 
The enlisted man is not free to pick and choose among the 
orders of his commanding officer, according as he fully 
understands the purpose for which they are given. If we 
have grave doubts whether we fully grasp the significance 
of the sacrament, let us share in it gladly for what we are 
able to perceive, hoping that little by little its depth of mean- 
ing may grow upon us. 

And this much we clearly can perceive : that it is a 
memorial service of loving remembrance of our Lprd, a 

159 



[X-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

symbol of our real participation in his life, and an outward 
sign of our endless fellowship with all the company of those 
who love him and call him Lord, whether in heaven or on 
earth. Not one of us, for our soul's sake, can afford to 
forsake an observance so vital, so uplifting, so glorious, 
which knits us up forever with the household of all faithful 
souls. 

Many of us remember how the young Free Kirk minister 
in "The Bonnie Brier Bush" was led by his mother's memory 
"to say a gude word for Jesus Christ" in his first sermon. 
Of all that human lips could utter, there surely is nothing 
greater or more good to hear. The world-pervading influence 
of Christianity rests', after all, not upon any philosophy 
skilfully adapted to modern thought, but upon the simple 
testimony of human lips that the faith of Jesus Christ is a 
power that redeems life, that it yields life at its best. Where 
this testimony dies out, there Christianity ceases to be the 
real thing, and presently becomes a pretentious shadow of 
its true self. Where it is spoken with the earnestness of 
genuine conviction, there it is like a spreading fire, whether 
the speaker be brought up like Phillips Brooks in the best 
American culture, or like Gypsy Smith, in a wandering 
caravan. 

It is a wonderful thing that a little working girl from a 
drunkard's home should grow up, like Mary Slessor, to have 
her word run unchallenged as beneficent law through un- 
known regions of forest in savage Africa, because she spoke 
so plainly and lovingly of what Jesus means to men today. 
But Christian character at normal level means the participa- 
tion in just this life-giving witness, in ways great or small. 
Let the burden of proof rest on us if this is not so. Why 
can we not help to pass on the blessings that have come to 
us through him, mediated it may be in many respects through 
generations of his loyal followers? Why should not we be 
messengers of God to needy people in our time? Is it fitting 
and necessary that, in this central matter of knowledge of 
the Life-giver, .we should spread doubt and dejection and 
disappointment, only to sap the chief resources of moral 
regeneration in society? It may be our deep misfortune to 

1 60 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-c] 

be so entangled in doubts that the only message of inspiration 
we can bring to society is that "we do not know." But if 
this is not so, if the goodly faith brought by Jesus Christ 
is actually redeeming our lives, why should it not be we 
who have the privilege of passing on the living faith to 
others ? 

There are numberless ways of serving society, and whether 
it be the washing of dishes at home or the shaping of a 
world's diplomacy in the court of nations, the glory of God's 
service may rest upon them all. But surely he who lifts 
men up toward God, who ministers spiritual strength and 
deliverance and comfort to hard-pressed men and women, 
has a task that is to be envied before all others. For a 
minister without a living message, who merely discusses the 
questions of the hour or hands on ethical and theological 
conventionalities, his task is stupid drudgery. But if one 
might share the work that Jesus once did in Palestine, a 
work of love, brightened with hope and strong in the confi- 
dence of God, that would seem to be the highest privilege 
a man could ask on earth. Hemmed about with limitations, 
many of us have yet found it so. Then why not I, in some 
one of the hundred lines of spiritual ministry i' 

V 

Great character can hardly be had without great thoughts 
on which to nourish it. The Bolshevik outlook will breed 
Bolshevik selfishness. Many a plain Scottish peasant, ponder- 
ing even at the plow-tail on the majesty of God and the 
wonder of His purposes for men, has been, like Carlyle's 
father, one of God's nobility. Jesus' plan of character- 
building did not rest on mere exhortation to go forth to a 
life of service. It showed its divine quality by equipping 
men for it. It lifted men's eyes to such spacious horizons 
and attuned their thoughts to such thrilling hopes, that mean, 
narrow, selfish living became impossible. 

A weakness of our time is that it seeks to get whole-souled 
devotion without deep conviction, and a life of the highest 
service without the highest inspiration. A poor cobbler sit- 
ting at his bench in a tiny English village faces a map of 
the world hung opposite him upon the wall ; and looking 
at it day by day, as through the eyes of his Master, he lays 

i6i 



[X-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

down his cobbler's tools to win one of the greatest names 
of his generation as scholar and benefactor. But nothing 
less magnijficent than the imperial scope of the thought of 
Jesus could have lifted William Carey out of his petty pro- 
vincialism and made him an apostle to the peoples of India. 

It is not an afterthought, then, nor an extension of the 
proper scope of these studies, that we should consider last 
of all our Lord's call to a world-wide mission and to the 
power of an endless life. They are immediately germane to 
the enterprise of character-building. The man who, for the 
sake of effectiveness and intensity, limits his outlook to his 
own circle and the years just at hand, deliberately cripples 
the wings that might lift him to a larger and more generous 
life. He dislocates himself from the spiritual environment in 
which his Alaster lived — and little does this make for efficient 
living. There is, of course, no direct connection between the 
two ideas. But they remind us that the commands of Jesus, 
that began with the infinite outreach of the call to love God, 
leave us all still face to face with a supreme duty and a 
supreme anticipation. We may be busied every day wnth 
the labor of winning our bread and butter, but we live and 
move and have our being in a mental environment that is 
divinely wide and wonderful. 

Consider for a moment the reaction upon character of a 
faithful acceptance of the "great commission." Millions of 
our fellow-citizens in these recent months have come into a 
relation of genuine sympathy with peoples who a few years 
ago were wholly outside the circle of their interests. Farmers' 
homes in California and Kansas and Virginia today have 
actually been saving food for the starving in Belgium and 
Serbia and Poland and Syria, and doing it voluntarily and 
intelligently, because we in this country feel ourselves in the 
place of a big brother to these other peoples in their distress. 
The common people of America have a stake in those coun- 
tries today, and we can never again shrink back into the 
petty provincial limits that once bounded our interests. It 
has immeasurably enriched the life of Americans that we 
should have been compelled to pour out both money and 
life for those who we once thought had no claim on us 
whatever. We can no longer rest in our peace and plenty 
while whole peoples die of oppression and starvation, • 

162 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-c] 

Jesus directly commends to the sympathy of every Chris- 
tian man the whole vast family of those for whom He gave 
Himself. We exult in the possession of a spiritual inherit- 
ance that makes life great; we have learned through it how 
to find life at its best. He calls us to be as the big brothers 
of those who are helpless or degraded for lack of just what 
we possess. The knowledge of the love of God has made 
rich and sacred for us all the deep joys of life. It is our 
concern that millions in Africa are left to a bestial savagery 
that robs them of life's sweetness. What have we to do 
with a peace and plenty that we do not even take the trouble 
to share? Every day we live comes under the constraining 
force of this appeal, to take thought for the poorest crea- 
tures who dwell with us under the blue sky of our Father. 
So far as we truly sympathize with them we think our Lord's 
thoughts after him. And this greatens life, in every one of 
its relationships. There are few pastors but could tell of 
those in their circle of acquaintance who have been trans- 
figured from commonplace pettiness and lifted morally to a 
higher plane by their growing interest in the spread of the 
Kingdom of God. 

This is not theory, but simple fact. Here, for instance, 
is China struggling tragically to get upon its feet as a 
republic. After ten years of terrible effort and confusion, 
it finds itself balked for lack of character — just for want 
of enough men of integrity in high places. Whatever its 
religious systems may once have been, they have not now 
the power to cleanse men's lives of selfishness; and so, in 
spite of all changes in form of government, the old graft 
breaks out everywhere and thwarts the hopes of those who 
long for China's regeneration. It is no wonder that Mr. 
Eddy, on his last visit, everywhere found thoughtful Chinese 
sobered by sense of this great need — the need of men of 
incorruptible integrity, such as the Christian faith produces, 
men like Wilson and Taft and Roosevelt, like Lloyd George 
and Balfour and Bryce, soldiers like Pershing and Haig and 
Allenby and Beatty, and thousands of others in lesser places 
but not of lesser fidelity. 

This illimitable need of China, of such profound conse- 
quence to the rest of humanity, our Lord directly commends 
to the young men and women in Christian lands today. A 

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[X-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

hundred trivial fancies and interests that tease us for con- 
sideration are driven out of sight as we face honestly this 
vast appeal for help, now at this time, which our Lord 
endorses. Can we find anywhere a more satisfying ambition 
than that of building the infinitesimal contribution of our 
lives into the development of this great people? Even if we 
cannot respond in person to the appeal, can we measure the 
effect upon our lives of a perfectly honest attempt to under- 
stand and face it, and of a lifelong sympathy with the army 
that is giving itself to this divine campaign? 

It is not, then, a matter of little moment whether or not 
we give heed to this last command. 

VI 

It is easy to point' out ways In which belief in the future 
life has been allowed to prejudice the dignity and importance 
of the life that now is. But the example and teaching of 
Jesus have the opposite effect. He knew that his few years 
in Galilee did not tell the whole story of his existence. Car- 
penter he was, and then teacher. But life held more for 
him than mending benches or addressing crowds ; and death 
was only the gateway to its extension. All the dignity and 
glory of that endless life he centered on these tasks of the 
hour. It was his meat and drink to do in Nazareth the will 
of his Father in heaven. He perfectly gave himself to being 
faithful in a very little. The very fact that his working- 
man's job was part of a majestically far-reaching whole, 
made it great and satisfying. 

And so he taught his disciples to think of their work on 
earth. It was not the whole of life for them, and all the 
more fervently and joyously were they to live it out on that 
account. Their life was not to dwindle down in senile decay, 
till they were glad to be rid of it as no longer worth the 
living, but was to open out with death into new powers and 
new responsibilities, for which these earthly days should be 
the preparation. That unknown future lay in their Father's 
hand, all unrevealed. Only the present was theirs, and on 
it their whole capacity for service should be centered. 

Jesus sent out his disciples as helpers of society. They 
were to spend themselves for the good of their fellows in 
such ways as God should open to them. That is what you 

164 



THE GOODLY FELLOWSHIP [X-c] 

and I are indubitably called to do. And it enhances im- 
measurably the interest and dignity of our efforts that the 
material on which we work is of matchless quality, of endless 
durability. Those who remember the Centennial Exposition 
will remember an amateur sculptor of that day who worked 
in butter, and whose groups, modeled out of that material, 
were held to show genuine artistic ability. But it is poor 
business working with such perishable stuff. Only bronze 
and marble are lasting enough for a true artist to be content 
to spend effort upon them. If the boys and girls for whose 
characters we labor, in classes or clubs or settlements, are 
presently to pass out of existence like the cattle in the 
meadows, then the glory of our work is largely gone. It 
may still be necessary, but never again can it seem to us as 
it would if their ennobled lives were to remain and grow 
without end for the glory of God. To accept Jesus' teach- 
ing as to the unending life, is to find the completest inspira- 
tion for social service. 

We count ourselves by faith the servants of God, the 
friends of him who was the Great Friend of men. We shall 
go about our work today with more courage and elation if 
we know that this friendship is not of a beggarly and dis- 
appointing incoiiclusiveness, leading us on a little way till 
we are sensible of longings and capacities utterly beyond our 
present attainments, and then plunging us into the last 
irretrievable disappointment of death without a future, as 
those who have no further use or place in all God's universe. 
If this is all we mean to' God, if this is all the value of the 
love he asks from us as children, then we are forlorn indeed 
when life begins to lose its vigor. But if the friendship is 
not to be broken, if he with whom we walk by faith today 
is to come within our sight tom.orrow, if the dawning capaci- 
ties for love and righteousness are a promise of what shall 
be, then, O Lord, help us to exult in any service we may 
do for thee, knowing that presently we shall be like thee, 
when we see thee as thou art. 

After all, it is not so much through the commands of 
Jesus that men find the needed power for right living, as 
through the invitations that underlie them. The more we 
study his life, the more we realize that as a whole it con- 
veyed to men the invitation of infinite love. He gave him-- 

165 



IX-c] BUILDING ON ROCK 

self pfefffectly to human need, that we might surely know 
how Our Father longs after his children, and how he goes 
iti search of them in tender ways, to draw them to himself. 
And it is this invitation, and the manner of his giving it, 
that have chiefly held the gaze of thoughtful men through 
the centuries. The commands are our marching orders — we 
must look to them to see what he would have us be. But 
the will and power to obey them steadfastly, like good 
soldiers, grow strong within us as we accept in gratitude the 
everlasting forgiveness and renewal that he brings. Only 
the character built up under this firm constraint of love 
answers fully to the purpose of the Master-Builder. 



i66 



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